| Worth seeing: | as a behind-the-scenes telling of the unravelling of an often-revisited tale of a terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics |
| Director: | Tim Fehlbaum |
| Featuring: | John Magaro, Peter Sarsgaard, Ben Chaplin, Benjamin Walker, Corey Johnson, Daniel Adeosun, Jeff Book, Leonie Benesch, Marcus Rutherford, Rony Herman, Zinedine Soualem |
| Length: | 95 minutes |
| Certificate: | 15 |
| Country: | Germany, US |
| Released: | 6th February 2025 |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
One day in September, 1972, during a cigarette break, some of the ABC Sports team covering the Munich Olympics hear what sound like gunshots.
As they scramble around to try to find out what’s going on, their German translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch) starts monitoring German TV channels – and police radio – while the studio director Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) wakes up the boss, Roone Arledge (Peter Saarsgaard).
It turns out that Palestinian terrorists, belonging to the Black September group, have burst into the Israeli team headquarters and kidnapped 11 people – to try to use them as leverage to demand the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
With ABC Sports currently in control of the only satellite feed out of Munich – the responsibility of reporting one of the most significant news events of the era falls on this inexperienced group of sports journalists.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
In more than 50 years since the 1972 Summer Olympics were blighted by the horrific terror attack on Israeli team members, the story has been revisited several times on screen – most notably in Kevin Macdonald‘s Oscar-winning documentary, One Day In September, and Steven Spielberg‘s Munich, which covered the events after the attack, as Israel sought justice.
This time, the Swiss writer and director, Tim Fehlbaum, takes a different approach again, telling the full story of the hostage crisis – but from the perspective of a group of American sports journalists, who don‘t yet know what’s going on themselves.
We viewers learn the details of the unfolding drama at the same time as the journalists, who‘ve previously reported on nothing more dramatic than the 100m sprint final or the Superbowl – dramatic, perhaps, but arguably with fewer geopolitical consequences. They quickly have to learn the responsibilities of their colleagues in news, having to balance what they know with what is appropriate to pass on to their audiences – what if a hostage is shot while they are broadcasting live pictures? What if the kidnappers are watching their coverage? What if they get something wrong? They’re not dealing with points, goals or touch-downs now – they’re dealing with lives.
The control room drama – as it ratchets up from just trying to get the best live pictures, to keeping the satellite feed and trying to find relatives of the hostages to interview – adds a touch of the James L Brooks classic Broadcast News into the mix and it‘s an effective touch that Fehlbaum has his characters interact with archive footage of the ABC Sports legend Jim McKay, for added authenticity.
Fehlbaum’s Oscar-nominated screenplay, the claustrophobic mise-en-scene and taut performances add up to a tense and revealing thriller – but there’s the added element of its timely release; a film about Palestinian militants taking a group of Israelis to try to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, in the full glare of the international media, being released even as Palestinian militants are releasing Israeli hostages, in exchange for Palestinians being held in Israeli jails.
One of the members of the sports team is Jewish and another is an Arab Muslim – and it touches on the notion of whether referring to the Black September group as terrorists is acceptable – but most of the politics is reserved for the German government’s attitude to providing armed security at the Games; less than three decades after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, Germany didn’t want to be seen as militarily heavy handed; it was as if they had just left the door open and put up a sign saying “Come on in!”
There is also the reticence of the Olympic Games organisers to stop the competition, even when what is going on becomes clear. And then there is the office politics, as the ABC Sports boss fights his corner to stop news journalists, back in the US, taking control of the coverage. When one of his colleagues warns him of the dangers of dipping his toe in the news pool, he insists, “It’s not about politics – it’s about emotions.”
But as for parallels with modern politics, Fehlbaum is – perhaps – wise enough to steer clear. Despite the fact that most of the work on the film pre-dates the 7th October attacks by Hamas, that’s not what his story is about – this film celebrates the first live TV coverage of a major hostage situation – produced by a group of sports experts, who were way out of their depth. I don’t know about the athletes – but they deserved a medal.