Set during the 1972 Munich Olympics, the film follows an American Sports broadcasting team that quickly adapted from sports reporting to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage. Through this lens, “September 5” provides a powerful new perspective on the live broadcast seen globally by an estimated one billion people at the time.

At the heart of the story is Geoff, a young and ambitious producer striving to prove himself to his boss, the legendary TV executive Roone Arledge. Together with Marianne, a German interpreter, Geoff unexpectedly takes the helm of the live coverage. As narratives shift, time ticks away, and conflicting rumours spread, with the hostages’ lives hanging in the balance, Geoff grapples with tough decisions while confronting his own moral compass. How do you cover a situation like this if what the perpetrators want is the spotlight you give?

Swiss filmmaker Tim Fehlbaum’s thriller allows us to experience the dramatic hostage-taking through the eyes of the journalists. The film raises questions of media ethics. Whose story is it when the media report live on terror – that of the broadcaster or that of the terrorists?