Taut Munich Olympics thriller explores media and terror

A new thriller set in the newsroom of US broadcaster ABC during the 1972 Munich Olympics explores how ABC's journalists were among the first to cover a terror attack on TV in real-time, "a turning point" in media history, its director Tim Fehlbaum told AFP.

"September 5", nominated for best drama at the Golden Globes, had a limited release in the United States in December and will hit screens internationally in the coming weeks.

It recounts the struggles and ethical dilemmas faced by the ABC news crew as they find themselves switching from athletics and boxing to covering an attack on the Israeli Olympic team by Palestinian militants.

One of the most infamous moments in Olympic history came just as live television took off. However, this was several years before the advent of rolling news channels and decades before today's social media live streaming.

"The Munich Olympic Games were a turning point in media history, in terms of the media apparatus for broadcasting," Fehlbaum told AFP during an interview in Paris.

"The point that we wanted to make is how technology has an influence on the media, and in that way, also has an influence on how we perceive news events."

"September 5" depicts a media landscape far away from today's world of online disinformation and media organizations in crisis.

In the early 1970s, cameras were shooting with 16mm film, telephones used fixed lines, and graphics were constructed manually -- all re-created by Fehlbaum, a confessed "geek," in luscious detail.

'Tough' decisions

Despite the ABC crew's mistakes, the 42-year-old Swiss-German director said he had sympathy for them and, by extension, for other professional journalists making split-second decisions during breaking news coverage.

"My respect has only grown for people working in that field," he said.

"Today, when I watch the news or the Olympics, I know how gigantic the apparatus is, how many decisions are made in the background, and how tough it is to make these decisions."

Fehlbaum's cameras rarely leave the ABC gallery, where sweaty news producers must decide what to broadcast. The actors are often seen in dialogue with real-world archive footage broadcast that day.

The film does not linger on the lives of the victims or explore the motives of the perpetrators, the Palestinian militant group Black September.

"We wanted to tell a story about media, about the media perspective," Fehlbaum said.