‘September 5’ Review: Nail-Biting Docudrama Chronicles ’72 Munich Olympic Massacre From ABC Control Booth POV – Venice Film Festival
deadline.comThe story of the horrifying crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where militant Palestinian terrorists known as Black September took the entire Israeli team hostage, killing all, has been told many times via TV movies, as well as a different perspective in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated Munich.
That widely praised 2005 film followed the hunt for the terrorists. Now comes a completely different and absolutely riveting account in September 5, a docudrama set almost entirely in the ABC control booth where the network’s sports crew was headquartered to cover the games as a live TV event.
No one could have foreseen the drama that would unfold over 22 tense hours as this group of television professionals, inexperienced in hard news, would have to switch gears and bring these tragic, unfolding events in real time to billions around the globe.
Swiss-born director Tim Fehlbaum, working from a screenplay he wrote with German writer Moritz Binder, has delivered a unique kind of play-by-play scenario by chronicling this story from the point of view of those watching it unfold in front of a wall of TV monitors as they deal with their own horror at what is happening and must make key decisions on how to cover something where they have no idea of how it will end.
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