‘September 5’ Director Tim Fehlbaum Didn’t Know Studio Rules When Making His Indie — That’s a Good Thing

“September 5” is a dark horse contender in the Oscar race, after debuting in Venice, Telluride, and the market in Toronto, where it was a sales title financed by Republic, a division of Paramount, which was looking for a buyer. Only after strong reviews and awards chatter around this $8.2 million docudrama — set during the tragic events of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games — did Paramount agree to release the thriller in time for the Oscars.

Still, the studio pushed the release date back to December 13, which is often a sign of insecurity about box office prospects, so it was late out of the starting gate, and early awards groups didn’t go for it. That’s partly because it’s a riveting, no-frills, tautly edited piece of mise-en-scène with an ensemble cast that doesn’t call attention to itself. A studio exec might have called for a scene-grabbing moment for Peter Sarsgaard as ABC sports chief Roone Arledge, and John Magaro (“Past Lives”) is superb as the young director calling the shots in the newsroom, but the movie isn’t exploring character as much as revealing the moral dilemmas that erupted from covering a tragic terrorist news event live. There’s considerable debate about using the word “terrorist,” for example.

ABC Sports was the only news outlet with a live feed from inside the Olympic Village, where nine Israeli athletes were being held hostage. That’s why Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum, who went to film school with screenwriter Moritz Binder in Munich, decided to focus their story on the ABC News team’s live coverage of the events unfolding in real-time.

“They were the only ones that were actually showing live images of what was happening,” Fehlbaum told IndieWire on Zoom. “And that was crucial for us.”

It helped that during their research they sat down with Geoffrey Mason (Magaro), who told them what went on during that marathon of broadcasting. “We thought, ‘maybe we could entirely tell the story from that perspective,'” said Fehlbaum.

Opting to focus on the ABC crew turned “September 5” into an English language German/U.S. co-production with a few German characters sprinkled throughout, like the intrepid translator/reporter played by Leonie Benesch (“The Teacher’s Lounge”). “She represents the German point of view,” said Fehlbaum, “the new Germany. It was still close to World War II. There was this new generation trying to show a new Liberal Germany. Germany wanted to send out the image of the first Olympics on German soil since Hitler’s Olympics of ’36. So that’s why they didn’t have armed police officers in the Olympic Village — because they didn’t want any weapons there to be visible.”

Leonie Benesch at the Venice Film FestivalVittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images

After writing the script in German, co-writer Alex David went over the translation. Also key to the concept of the movie was the mix of archive footage of anchor Jim McKay and others. “We had to get the rights to the original footage,” said Fehlbaum, “because I wanted to have original images on the screens. The DP, Markus Förderer, and I talked about wanting to shoot it as if we would ourselves be a broadcast crew in that room. So we wanted to see what they see to be really on the screen. And we wanted to have that blend of real scenes with our scenes. Because in a film that is ultimately about the media, you have to have the authentic media from back then. So that was crucial for us, that we actually played around a lot in the color correction process then on how extreme do we go to that lines and dots look.”

The even more important reason that it was crucial to have the original footage is Jim McKay’s performance. “You couldn’t recreate such a unique performance,” said Fehlbaum, “and how he reported on this, this unique blend of being a professional addressing the audience, but also with a certain empathy. This would have been hard to reenact with an actor.”

Once they got their hands on the ABC footage, the script changed radically. “We structured the script again, because there were so many things that we could have never come up with ourselves,” said Fehlbaum, “like when they have to interrupt the interview with the coach who could escape in the morning, because they’re losing the satellite slot. This is something you would never come up with.”

‘September 5’Courtesy Venice Film Festival

The filmmakers decided to shoot at Bavaria Studios and to create a small space for the TV broadcast studio without breakout walls. “With Julian Wagner, the production designer, and Marcus the DP, we talked a lot about claustrophobia,” said Fehlbaum. “And it has to feel very tight, because it was like that for these people.”

Luckily, there are collectors out there who specialize not only in the Munich games memorabilia but the vintage equipment, monitors, and keyboards, et al., of that period. “Peter Jennings was reporting on-site from one of the balconies that was opposite from the apartment where it happened,” said Fehlbaum. “The only way they could talk to the news station was via phone. Peter Jennings was the only one from the news department. So Roone wanted to have his voice commenting on everything. ‘How can we do this?’ And then this guy, came up with the idea: ‘We just connect the receiver of the phone to one of our microphones in the control room, and that’s when you hear Peter Jennings’s voice, really distorted.'”

The only notes Fehlbaum received came from producer Sean Penn, who read an early draft and suggested a crucial change. “In Germany, the film is being received as not German, as American,” said Fehlbaum. “And this is positive. But we wanted to have an American perspective on this, because at the end, it’s also an American view that we see it through. So we’re lucky that Sean Penn and his production company came on board quite early to offer us that American perspective on everything. Penn felt that the character of John Magaro isn’t enough sports-obsessed. Munich ’72 wasn’t experienced journalists that were used to making news. It was sports reporters. And Sean Penn, after he read the script, he made that note to us that you should make that more clear in the beginning, that these are enthusiastic sports people, especially in the character of John Magaro, that he knows all these games that are happening, who is fighting against who on that day. Because that would make the stakes even higher, if they then have to change to make the switch from reporting on sports to reporting on news.”

Because Fehlbaum and his DP used many long takes with room for some improvisation, “We always wanted to have one situation that they see on the monitors and how the crew reacts to it,” said Fehlbaum. “We wanted to cover it in one long take with two cameras, as if we would be a documentary or broadcast crew ourselves. So just long takes, no editing and no cutting and the phone calls that would come in. With that approach, you get some interesting moments that you wouldn’t get if you don’t shoot that way. Of course, you generate a lot of material. And this is where Hansjörg Weißbrich, the editor, was crucial in structuring that material. It was very much shaped in the editing process, and also how to include the original footage: ‘When do we see the monitors? When do we see them watching the monitors?’ That was complicated.”

in the end, this spare piece of filmmaking should play well for cinephiles, mainstream movie audiences, and Oscar voters, but it may simply not be big-scale enough to register as a major contender.