Peter Sarsgaard in the Munich Olympics Terror Drama

In an age where world events are reported instantly on social media and news sites, arriving on your phone as they unfold, it's an enlightening and compelling experience to watch. September 5thshowing how a dedicated ABC Sports crew managed to live-stream the terrorist attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympics. No small feat, considering how limited the technology was back then compared to today.

Not only does German director Tim Fehlbaum’s third successful feature film detail all the logistical hurdles the team had to overcome to capture the crisis as it happened, relying on massive cameras, smuggled 16mm film, multiple walkie-talkies and a whole lot of ingenuity. More importantly, the film details the difficult questions faced by journalists, and a key translator, as they struggled to cover a situation where lives hung in the balance.

These lingering questions, as well as the intense, lived-in performances of a formidable cast, help make September 5th More than just a time capsule of how news was handled in the pre-digital age; it's an account that speaks to our own times, too.

Flawlessly blending tons of archival footage from September 5, 1972, a day now familiar to anyone who watched it live, with extraordinary behind-the-scenes footage from the ABC crew who worked overtime and more to get it all on the air, the film focuses on the key players in the newsroom who fought to make it all happen.

Among them are Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), the ABC executive in charge of broadcasting the '72 Munich Olympics; Marvin (Ben Chaplin), the team's smart, irascible operations manager; Marianne (Leonie Benesch), a local translator of German and much, much more; and Geoff (John Magaro), a young producer who is supposed to document a day without boxing and volleyball events, but ends up stumbling upon something far more significant.

At first it doesn't seem that way, and after a day in which Mark Spitz took home a gold medal in swimming, a sleepy camera crew settles in for what seems like a quiet shift. But then gunshots ring out in Olympic Village, just a few blocks away from ABC's temporary headquarters. Geoff, left in charge while the higher-ups take a much-needed day off, soon finds himself doing everything he can to both figure out what's going on and tell viewers back home about it.

With the help of Marianne, who goes from being an overlooked interpreter to a top-notch reporter on the ground, Geoff and his team soon realize that a pivotal, potentially world-changing event is unfolding: Palestinian terrorists, belonging to a group known as Black September, have killed two Israeli athletes and taken a dozen others hostage, demanding the release of hundreds of prisoners in exchange.

All this, of course, happens in Germany, at a time when the country was just beginning to publicly reckon with the horrors inflicted on Jews during World War II. That history is not easily forgotten by Geoff and others, especially Marvin, who is the son of Holocaust victims and harbors a deep grudge against the Germans he comes into contact with.

Felhbaum, who co-wrote the screenplay with Moritz Binder, provides some background on Marvin and the other characters during the film's opening minutes, which begin with a behind-the-scenes exposition of the ABC Sports crew at work. After that, September 5th It quickly becomes a detailed account of how the media coverage of Munich was done, and it's really compelling to watch.

Among the many obstacles Geoff faces, one of the main ones is obtaining footage of the building where the hostages are being held. Quick and fearless, he has his team transport a giant newsroom camera up a hill outside the office, while a smaller 16mm camera is smuggled, along with star reporter Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker), into a building across the street from the besieged Israeli dormitories.

But that raises another question: how do you get 16mm footage out of a police-locked area? Geoff has another crazy idea, disguising a crew member (Daniel Adeosun) as a Team USA athlete and sneaking him back and forth with cans of film strapped to his body. The exposed reels are then developed in an on-site lab, with one of them revealing the infamous black-and-white footage of a masked Black September member lingering outside on the balcony.

September 5th doesn't skimp on any technological details (we also learn that Jennings has been reporting the events over the phone, with the receiver hooked up to a studio microphone), but Felhbaum steps aside often enough to help viewers see the bigger picture.

What happens if Black September ends up executing one of the athletes? Does the team even film it live on television, possibly broadcasting it home to the parents of David Berger, an American-born weightlifter competing under the Israeli flag? (The larger Israeli-Palestinian issue, however, is never raised in the film, which keeps its eyes glued to events as they unfolded at the time.)

Geoff isn't sure what to do about it, and finds himself caught between Marvin, who becomes the crew's moral beacon, and Roone, who is constantly battling both his own network and others, including CBS, with whom he shares the only available satellite link, to maintain exclusivity on the story. The fact that all of this is being handled by journalists more knowledgeable about sports than terrorism adds another layer of intrigue, though September 5th suggests that it is precisely thanks to the team's experience in live events that they have managed to be so successful.

Even though we know how tragically the Munich attacks ended, the film remains suspenseful until the end, focusing on characters caught between their desire to get their jobs done and their awareness of what exactly is at stake. Magaro (Past Lives, First cow) perfectly encapsulates this dilemma, as does the rest of the cast, with the talented actress Benesch (The teachers' room, Babylon Berlin) playing a character who finds himself in a particularly difficult situation, acting as an intermediary between the Germans and the Americans.

While the equipment available in 1972 was limited to shaky 16mm or giant studio rigs, Fehlbaum and cinematographer Markus Förderer now have much more to work with, though they keep the camera over-the-shoulder and intimate to better focus on the performances. Editor Hansjörg Weissbrich expertly cuts all the available archive footage, so we mostly see what was actually shot by the ABC Sports crew rather than recreations of those images.

The raw, naturalistic aesthetic seems light years away from the director's previous film, an ambitious sci-fi drama called The colonyAnd while Fehlbaum certainly took some liberties with what actually happened in the ABC newsroom, he never loses sight of the enduring importance of reporting real, not fake, news in the most relevant way possible.