SEPTEMBER 5 — Tim Fehlbaum Interview

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I had seen SEPTEMBER 5 twice by the time I spoke via Zoom with its director and co-writer, Tim Fehlbaum on January 7, 2025. I started with how skillfully he created a sense suspense ever people who knew the outcome of the Palestinian terrorists taking Israeli athletes hostage at the 1972 Olympics. Fehlbaum’s film, set entirely within the ABC television control room, begins shortly before the first shots can be heard as the terrorists invade the athletes rooms within the Olympic village, and ends at the end of the incident a day later. In between the sports division doing the first live broadcast from the Olympics, has to decide what to show, how to describe it, and to discern fact from rumor as events unfold in a time before cell phones. The questions raised then are still relevant, and Fehlbaum’s precise storytelling that focuses on Geoffrey Mason, the young producer making the moment-to-moment decisions makes for a riveting film that will keep you, as it did me, on the edge of your seat with its intelligence, its suspense, and its humanity.

We went on to talk about the many varieties of politics in play in that control center, the why he wanted to make a film that was as much about what is not seen as what is shown, and the necessity for Fehlbaum of recreating the ABC control room in its entirety.

We finished up with how talking to the real Geoffrey Mason helped Fehlbaum shape the narrative, the visual impact of little things, and why he didn’t want to recreate Jim McKay.

The film stars Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Zinedine Soualem, Daniel Adeosun, Benjamin Walker, Marcus Rutherford, and Georgina Rich. Fehlbaum directed from a script he co-wrote with Moritz Binder and Alex David. Fehlbaum’s previous work includes THE COLONY and HELL.