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September 5 took top honors at the German Film Awards, or Lolas, held in Berlin Friday night.

Tim Fehlbaum’s real-life thriller, based on the terrorist attacks on the 1972 Munich Olympics, picked up nine Lolas, including for best director, best editing, best cinematography, best sound design, best screenplay, best makeup and best production design.

Leonie Benesch won best supporting actress for her performance as a translator for the U.S. television network broadcasting the attacks live to the world. September 5 premiered at the Venice film festival last year before becoming an awards contender and landing a best original screenplay Oscar nomination for Fehlbaum, Moritz Binder and Alex David.

Accepting his best director prize, Fehlbaum praised his German team, and, with a side swipe at Donald Trump and his promised tariffs on “foreign films,” noted that “they can raise the tariffs as high as the want, there is not reason to make films anywhere else [than here].”

Wolfram Weimer,...

Oscar contenders September 5 and The Seed of the Sacred Fig, and Andreas Dresen’s historic drama From Hilde, With Love are the frontrunners for this year’s German Film Awards, also called the Lolas, Germany’s equivalent of the Oscars.

September 5, Tim Fehlbaum’s real-life thriller based on the terrorist attacks on the 1972 Munich Olympics, picked up 10 nominations, including for best film and best director, as well as a supporting actress nom for Leonie Benesch, who plays a translator for the U.S. television network broadcasting the attacks live to the world.

Second and third in the running are Dresen’s From Hilde, With Love, which picked up seven Lola nominations, including for best film and best director, with Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian drama The Seed of the Sacred Fig right behind with six.

Rasoulof’s depiction of an Iranian family torn apart by conflicting loyalties to an increasingly oppressive Tehran regime,...

When the first gunshots ring out announcing Black September’s attack on the Israeli athletic team at the start of historical thriller September 5, the news team smoking cigarettes outside their off-village base don’t initially register what’s going on. It also signals the start of filmmaker Tim Fehlbaum’s choice to keep the ensuing horror at arm’s length, while the small team from ABC Sports stumble through what will become a historic day for news reporting.

For this is where Fehlbaum puts the film’s focus: on the men and woman behind the broadcast, with the events largely playing out on studio monitors. John Magaro, a convincingly anxious yet energetic presence, drives the story as Geoffrey Mason, a relatively green studio director who clocks in for what he thinks will be a day of live games coverage, only to be thrown into documenting a perilous stand-off while the world watches.

The new thriller September 5 recounts the taking of hostages during the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. It does so with such finesse and skill that it often feels more like a documentary of the event than a dramatic retelling, which is to say that the film proves to be very powerful indeed.

The film begins as an American sports broadcasting crew is closing out their day of coverage of the 1972 Munich Olympics when they suddenly find themselves in the unique position to cover the taking of Israeli athletes as hostages by Palestinian soldiers. What follows is a thrilling tale of the crew attempting to cover the story without jeopardizing the hostages safety, or placing themselves in harm’s way as well.

Director Tim Fehlbaum’s previous features – 2021’s The Colony and 2011’s Hell – only hinted at the dramatic weight the filmmaker was to throw down in September 5. Those were more stylistic,...

Director, writer and producer Tim Fehlbaum and writer Moritz Binder took guests behind their riveting thriller “September 5,” about the game-changing, real-time broadcast coverage of the 1972 Munich massacre from the perspective of the sports broadcasters who raced to cover the events, during the latest presentation of the Variety Screening Series presented by Barco.

They did tremendous research before starting to write the script, and that included a key conversation with producer Geoffrey Mason who was played by John Magaro in the movie. This prompted the decision to tell the story, uniquely from the point of view of CBS Sports broadcasters that were on site to cover the Olympics.

“We thought we were talking to a source, but [Mason] became the source,” Binder related of Mason taking them through the tense 22 hours in Munich. “He’s a very good storyteller; he got into so much detail. He talked about the questions that...

It can be incredibly difficult to tell an expansive story while restricting yourself to a single location. However, with September 5, the restriction actually enhanced the storytelling for the filmmakers and craftspeople, once they realized they found themselves in a very similar position to that ABC Sports team in 1972.

Told through the perspective of the ABC Sports team, September 5 takes place during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, where Israeli athletes were being held hostage by a terrorist group. “As someone who’s working in the media myself, I thought that I could say something that is especially relevant in today’s world about our complex media environment,” says director Tim Fehlbaum.

John Magaro in ‘September 5.’

Deadline spoke with writer-director Tim Fehlbaum, writer Moritz Binder, cinematographer Markus Förderer, production designer Julian Wagner, editor Hansjörg Weißbrich and composer Lorenz Dangel to discuss how the team told an expansive story from a small location.

“September 5” feels as much like a time capsule as a pressure cooker of a film, as an ABC Sports crew doing cutting-edge live broadcasting of the 1972 Munich Olympics ends up covering much more than that.

In its most compelling moments, the Tim Fehlbaum film shows the audience the gulf between the journalists making decisions with imperfect information and the implications of those decisions — the characters’ goal may be “to follow the story,” but real life never abides by the rules of journalistic objectivity. To create this tension throughout the film, production designer Julian R. Wagner needed to craft sets that felt as grounded, authentic, and (sometimes) claustrophobic as possible.

So Wagner and his production design team made their lives a lot more difficult in service of giving “September 5” as honest a depiction as possible of what it would’ve been like to walk the halls of that Munich studio in the summer of ‘72. “Normally,...

Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum’s “September 5” takes an unusual approach to the story of the terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic team at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, which ended with the deaths of the 11 athletes and coaches who had been taken hostage. For most of its running time, the Paramount film never leaves the ABC Sports studio where a staff accustomed to broadcasting sporting events tried to cover breaking news that was going out to an estimated 1 billion viewers worldwide.

By focusing on a control room, a small studio and a few offices and hallways, the film situates its big story in a small, crowded pressure cooker — and that’s how Fehlbaum and his longtime cinematographer Markus Förderer shot it, too.

“The art department was building the set on a soundstage, and they asked us, ‘Which walls should we break away? Do you want the ceiling to be open to light from the top?...

“September 5” is a dark horse contender in the Oscar race, after debuting in Venice, Telluride, and the market in Toronto, where it was a sales title financed by Republic, a division of Paramount, which was looking for a buyer. Only after strong reviews and awards chatter around this $8.2 million docudrama — set during the tragic events of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games — did Paramount agree to release the thriller in time for the Oscars.

Still, the studio pushed the release date back to December 13, which is often a sign of insecurity about box office prospects, so it was late out of the starting gate, and early awards groups didn’t go for it. That’s partly because it’s a riveting, no-frills, tautly edited piece of mise-en-scène with an ensemble cast that doesn’t call attention to itself. A studio exec might have called for a scene-grabbing moment for Peter Sarsgaard as ABC sports chief Roone Arledge,...

Like many first ideas, Tim Fehlbaum’s initial vision for “September 5” was wider in scope. Broadly speaking, the film is about the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The Swiss director’s original script, which he co-wrote with Moritz Binder, told the story from the perspectives of reporters, politicians, and police.

But then he talked to Geoffrey Mason, one of the producers behind ABC Sports’ live 22-hour coverage of the ordeal.

“We started to learn more and more what an important role the media played on that day,” Fehlbaum tells Gold Derby. “And then listening to Geoffrey Mason and his stories of what they experienced as a crew, what challenges they faced … we said, ‘Maybe you can entirely tell it from that perspective.'”

Fehlbaum and Binder streamlined the script to focus solely on the ABC Sports team making on-the-fly decisions after Palestinian militant organization Black September killed two members...

For 22 nail-biting, torturous hours in a crammed studio in Munich during the 1972 Olympics, an ABC Sports broadcast crew suddenly found itself in the middle of the action when violence broke out in the Olympic Village and Israeli athletes were taken hostage. In writer-director Tim Fehlbaum’s gripping take on that historical day, September 5 follows young and ambitious producer Geoff Mason (Robert Altman recipient John Magaro) and legendary TV executive Roone Arledge (Spirit Award nominee Peter Sarsgaard), who led a valiant effort to report the deadly event to the world, inadvertently broadcasting a terrorist attack live on the air for the first time in history.

We recently spoke to veteran picture editor Hansjörg Weißbrich, who is singularly qualified for this project thanks to a combination of his German language skills and his familiarity with analog editing equipment prevalent in the film.

Before we start, I just want to say that you...

Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 stars John Magaro, Peter Sarsgaard, Leonie Benesch, and Ben Chaplin as ABC sports journalists unexpectedly put in the position of narrativizing the hostage crisis of the 1972 Munich Olympics. It’s an effective thriller––one couldn’t accuse it of being boring––but takes what feels like the safest possible approach to its fraught subject matter.

September 5 opens with ABC’s vintage logo as a cheerful voice announces these as the first Olympic Games to be broadcast live, promising that the Munich edition will remind the world of what unites us––an irony-loaded statement for those who know what’s coming. The handheld camera follows the ABC journalists as they begin their day in the studio. It is director Geoffrey’s (Magaro) first day on the job. He’s hoping to impress his bosses: the ambitious Roone Arledge (Sarsgaard) and “voice of reason” Marvin (Chaplin). Soon, shocking...

Called “Gripping” by The Hollywood Reporter in their Venice Film Festival review, watch the trailer for September 5.

September 5 unveils the decisive moment that forever changed media coverage and continues to impact live news today. Set during the 1972 Munich Summer 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 fresh perspective on the live broadcast seen globally by an estimated one billion people at the time.

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), Geoff unexpectedly takes the helm of the live coverage. As narratives shift, time ticks away, and conflicting rumors spread, with...

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2024 Venice Film Festival. Paramount releases “September 5” in theaters December 13.

A story that doesn’t seem fresh on paper — and one previously explored in Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” — may be a barrier to entry for some audiences. But Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum’s “September 5,” which takes audiences inside the airtight, under-air-conditioned ABC News control room as terrorists commandeered the 1972 Summer Olympics mere yards away, is a gripping, singular depiction that stands on its own merits.

In a tight 94 minutes, Fehlbaum pivots from the mayhem outside and solely toward the handful of sports broadcasters forced to improvise as eight Palestinian militants, known as Black September, took the Israeli Olympic team hostage. All 11 hostages were killed. Though going into this movie with that historical perspective doesn’t impede the tension onscreen — even if “September 5’s” psychological inquiry into the crisis and how it reshaped TV news,...

The story of the horrifying crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where militant Palestinian terrorists known as Black September took the entire Israeli team hostage, killing all, has been told many times via TV movies, as well as a different perspective in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated Munich. That widely praised 2005 film followed the hunt for the terrorists. Now comes a completely different and absolutely riveting account in September 5, a docudrama set almost entirely in the ABC control booth where the network’s sports crew was headquartered to cover the games as a live TV event. No one could have foreseen the drama that would unfold over 22 tense hours as this group of television professionals, inexperienced in hard news, would have to switch gears and bring these tragic, unfolding events in real time to billions around the globe.

Swiss-born director Tim Fehlbaum, working from a screenplay he wrote with German writer Moritz Binder,...

It’s been one of Hollywood’s most sought-after invitations.

For the past few years, a who’s who of directors, cinematographers, studio execs and exhibitors have been quietly ushered into an unmarked room at the famed Glen Glenn Sound facility in Los Angeles. They’ve made the trek to get a peek at new projection technology that has been in the works for years at Barco, the Belgian tech firm known for its high-end cinema exhibition systems.

Industry insiders are abuzz at the promise that Barco’s lat- est innovation could radically upgrade the picture quality of films shown at the average multiplex. After years of development, Barco is ready to make a big splash at CinemaCon by showing off its new Hdr by Barco laser projection system using remastered footage from Hollywood movies. Hdr stands for “high dynamic range,” which expands the color contrast of visual imagery.

With a few exceptions,...

The Florian Hoffmeister lensed thriller Tár from director Todd Field topped the Camerimage main competition, collecting the Golden Frog during the closing ceremony of the cinematography film festival Saturday.

The Focus Features pic follows the fictional orchestra conductor Lydia Tár, considered one of the greatest at her craft and the first female chief conductor of a major German orchestra, as her life starts to unravel after she is embroiled in a swirl of #MeToo scandals.

The Golden Frog win gives cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister a new boost in the 2023 Oscars race, with three out of the last five Golden Frog winners going on to earn Oscar nominations in cinematography. Those titles include Lion (2016), Joker (2019), and Nomadland (2020).

In other main competition awards, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s latest Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, lensed by Darius Khondji, took home the Silver Frog and Living from cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay and...

Sam Mendes was the guest of honor at the opening of the 30th EnergaCamerimage Film Festival Saturday evening, where he picked up the Krzysztof Kieslowski career award and introduced a special screening of his latest film, Empire of Light.

Accepting the award in Toruń, Poland, Mendes praised the festival for its dedication to celebrating the art of cinematography and paid tribute to the cinematographers he has worked with throughout his career, describing them as the key to his success.

Mendes gave special mention to Conrad Hall, who shot his first two films, American Beauty and Road To Perdition. Hall won the best cinematography Oscar for his work on both films.

“Conrad was my guide, and ever since Conrad, cinematographers have always been my guide,” Mendes said before paying tribute to veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins. The pair have worked together on five films over 15 years, including Skyfall and 1917.

Mendes said...

Swiss filmmaker Tim Fehlbaum’s dystopian feature “Tides” is screening in this year’s Berlinale Special section and looking to make a mark at the European Film Market while in town, where Mister Smith Entertainment is handling international sales.

“Tides” has science fiction in its production DNA, co-produced by leading European independent company Constantin, which has established itself among the world’s leading producers of genre cinema with titles like “Resident Evil” and “Monster Hunters” in its catalog, and German Studio Babelsberg, the oldest large-scale film studio in the world and the home of cinema science fiction, where Fritz Lang shot “Metropolis.” Roland Emmerich was also on board as an executive producer, and Munich based BerghausWöbke Filmproduktion and Swiss Vega Film Ag (Ruth Waldburger) co-produced.

Fehlbaum’s story unspools in a dark and wet future when the privileged few who were able to leave Earth and avoid the consequences of...

Providing Sundance with slices of sci-fi theories in a pair of editions with Another Earth in 2011 and I Origins in 2014, auteur Mike Cahill had the opportunity to work on a larger canvas for his third outing. Working with the likes of Salma Hayek and Owen Wilson back in June of 2019 for a production that took place in Croatia, Bliss is a property of Amazon Studios. In-between features, Cahill worked on a quartet of television series. On this project he worked with cinematographer Markus Förderer.

Gist: This is about a recently-divorced guy falls for an enchanting woman’s theory that they live in a harsh, alternative world simulation inside of a beautiful, blissful reality.…...

First look at Nora Arnezeder in project; Mister Smith Entertainment launching sales at Afm.

Munich-based Constantin Film has begun production on sci-fi epic Haven - Above Sky, from director Tim Fehlbaum and executive producer Roland Emmerich.

Screen can reveal a first look at the film, which is starring Nora Arnezeder (Mozart In The Jungle), Iain Glen (Game Of Thrones), Sarah-Sofie Boussnina (Mary Magdalene), Sope Dirisu (The Huntsman: Winter’s Tale), Sebastian Roché (The Man In The High Castle) and Joel Basman (Land Of Mine).

Director Fehlbaum co-wrote the screenplay with Mariko Minoguchi. Set in the near future, after a global...

The J.J. Abrams-backed “Cloverfield” movie franchise has three titles under its belt, “Cloverfield,” “10 Cloverfield Lane,” and “The Cloverfield Paradox,” but there would be a fourth movie in development if special effects supervisor Greg Strasz had any say in the matter. Strasz, best known for his VFX work on films such as “It Follows,” “White House Down,” and “Independence: Day Resurgence,” directed an unofficial “Cloverfield” short film titled “Megan,” which centers around the daughter of John Goodman’s character from “10 Cloverfield Lane.”

“Megan” hit YouTube on July 31 and has earned over 32,000 views and counting (via Entertainment Weekly). In “10 Cloverfield Lane,” Goodman’s Howard Stambler frequently spoke about his daughter, Megan. The character was never seen on screen, as Howard said she went missing two years prior to the events of the film. Strasz’s short film imagines what happened to Megan and was filmed as a “proof of concept.

Courtesy of Roadside Attractions

Roadside Attractions will release Stonewall, a drama about the 1969 Stonewall riots that started America’s Lgbt rights movement, on September 25, 2015.

Written by Jon Robin Baitz and directed by Roland Emmerich, both out gay men, the film stars Jeremy Irvine and newcomer Jonny Beauchamp, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ron Perlman.

Emmerich, who also produced the film, says, “I was always interested and passionate about telling this important story, but I feel it has never been more timely than right now.” Less than 50 years ago, in 1969, being gay was considered a mental illness; gay people could not be employed by the government; it was illegal for gay people to congregate, and police brutality against gays went unchecked. Today, thanks to the events set in motion by the Stonewall riots, the gay rights movement continues to make incredible strides towards equality. In the past several weeks alone, the...

‎Exclusive: War Horse star Jeremy Irvine has been set to star in Stonewall, the next film that Roland Emmerich will direct. Scripted by Jon Robin Baitz, the film is about the June 28, 1969 police raid at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a mafia-owned bar that was a gathering place for gays and transgenders. It became the flashpoint for the gay rights movement, a galvanizing event that is considered a touchstone even today in the fight for equal rights for the gay and transgender population. Emmerich’s way in is to focus on a young man’s political awakening in the backdrop of those riots. The film is being produced by Michael Fossat, Marc Frydman and Emmerich, with Kirstin Winkler and Adam Press exec producing. Carsten Lorenz is line producer and Markus Förderer the cinematographer.‎ After his breakout turn in the Steven Spielberg-directed War Horse, Irvine has been busy. He...

Sebastian Junger and Andrea Nix Fine among filmmakers screening in competition at the cinematography festival.

Camerimage , the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Nov 16-23), has revealed its 2013 line-up of films screening in six of the festival’s competition sections.

The 21st edition of Camerimage will screen more than 300 feature and short films, grouped into 24 sections, including 10 competitions. There are films from 50 countries around the world.

Around 30 films will receive their European premieres in Bydgoszcz, and more that 50 will have their Polish premieres.

The Golden Frog, Silver Frog and Bronze Frog awards will be bestowed upon competition titles representing the greatest achievements in cinematography. In the Student Etudes Competition, the Festival awards Golden Tadpole, Silver Tadpole and Bronze Tadpole.

It was previously announced that Oscar-nominated cinematographer Sławomir Idziak (Black Hawk Down, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Gattaca) will be the recipient of the Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Competing films

Polish...

The 2011 Sitges Film Festival has concluded its competition portion and announced awards in more categories than we've seen at any other fest. The biggest winners are Kevin Smith's Red State and Joe Cornish's Attack the Block, but several other films we've been closely watching here on Dread scored victories as well, including Kill List, Livid, The Divide, The Woman, Bellflower, Hell, and Detention.

Here's the full breakdown from the fest, held 6-16 October on the Catalan coast of Spain. Congratulations to all the winners!

Oficial FANTÀSTIC In-competition – Sitges 44

J. A. Bayona, Quim Casas, Lisa Marie, Ryoo Seung-Wan, Richard Stanley (judges)

Best Short Film (tie)

Dirty Silverwear by Steve Daniels

The Unliving by Hugo Lilja

Best Production Design

Marc Thiébault for Livide (Alexandre Bustillo & Julian Maury)

Best Makeup FX

Steven Kostanski for The Divide (Xavier Gens)

Best Special Effects

Lluís Castells and Javier García for Eva (Kike Maíllo)

Best...