Paramount has dropped a new featurette for September 5, highlighting director Tim Fehlbaum‘s unique newsroom approach.
September 5 chronicles the transition to live tragedy coverage during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Fehlbaum’s claustrophobic style is present in a gripping account of media evolution for fans.
At the heart of the story is Geoff (John Magaro), a young and ambitious producer striving to prove himself to his boss, the legendary TV executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard). Together with German interpreter Marianne (Leonie Benesch) and his mentor Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), the story focuses on the intricate details of the high-tech broadcast capabilities of the time, juxtaposed against the many lives at stake and the moral decisions that needed to be made against an impossible ticking clock.
At Bavaria Studios, the filmmakers built 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.”
There are collectors out there who specialize in not only Munich games and memorabilia, but also vintage equipment, monitors, and keyboards, among other things, for that time. The only method they had for communicating with the news station was through phone. The news department only had Peter Jennings. Roon was eager to comment on everything. This guy came up with the idea of connecting the phone receiver to one of our microphones in the control room, and that’s what causes Peter Jennings’s voice to sound really distorted.
This well-wrought film should play for cinephiles, mainstream movie audiences, and Oscar voters, but it may not be big-scale enough to register as a major contender.
September 5, directed by Tim Fehlbaum, stars Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Zinedine Soualem, Georgina Rich, Corey Johnson, Marcus Rutherford, Daniel Adeosun, Benjamin Walker, and Ferdinand Dörfler.
September 5 will be in select theatres on December 13, 2024, and nationwide on January 17, 2025.