Directed by Tom Fehlbaum, who also co-wrote the Oscar-nominated original screenplay with Moritz Binder and Alex David, this movie takes place on September 5, 1972, at the Munich Olympics, when members of a terrorist organization called Black September broke into the apartment housing the Israeli team and took several coaches and athletes hostage. You might know this story from another movie, Steven Spielberg's Munich, that details the covert Israeli operation that was enacted as vengeance for this 1972 attack. But this movie is simply about the events of that one day. And more specifically, it is about the men and women of the ABC Sports television crew who were onsite to film the Olympic Games and then had to pivot to this tense and fraught news story instead.
This movie is a love letter to journalism. It's an astonishing look at a time when only one news network was broadcasting this story live and had to wrestle control of the global satellite from their competitors just to make sure their coverage could be watched by the world. John Magaro is brilliant as Geoffrey Mason, the sports producer in charge of the control room. He has no prior experience covering this type of story, but goes through a trial by fire to conduct a seamless broadcast, all the while gathering new information by the second and having to pivot to his anchors, cameramen, soundmen, and photographers, as well as the non-stop German translation provided by the poor translator, Marianne (Leonie Benesch), who had no idea what she had signed up for when she came to work that morning.
There is such an emphasis on confirming the story with sources and making sure you don't broadcast the news until you are certain they are facts. What a concept. Of course, this film does feature a heartbreaking moment where the president of ABC Sports, Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), does let the compelling ratings overtake the need to be diligent in fact-checking. But it's wild to imagine an age when only one news channel would be broadcasting this information, and they had the awesome responsibility of ensuring 900 million viewers knew what was going on.
It was only in moments of absolute stillness that I would realize this movie didn't have much of a soundtrack. Instead, the most consistent score is the sound of your pulse pounding in your ears as you lean forward and watch these heroic journalists jerry-rig equipment and put together an astonishingly powerful narrative to let the world know what is happening in Munich, when even the German police don't always seem to have a clue how to deal with the situation. The movie is only 94 minutes long, but it was a profound and intense 94 minutes where my heart was in my mouth, and I was utterly dazzled and awestruck by what was unfolding on the screen.
It makes no sense to me that this movie only got one Oscar nomination for its screenplay, though granted, that screenplay is certainly a masterpiece. I would have loved to see acting nominations for John Magaro and Leonie Benesch who do such incredible work here and make the audience feel immersed in all the chaos and confusion going on around them. The editing is spot on and the cinematography is excellent, featuring a lot of weird angles and shaky camerawork that constantly reinforce the sense of how this crew is having to make this story up as they go along and need to find any opportunity to film this breaking news. This is definitely going to be one of the best movies I've seen in 2025, and I urge everyone to watch it. In these trying times, we all need to remember a time when journalism was pure, and the news was something we could all depend on.
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