Oscar-Nominated Screenwriter Moritz Binder Finds the Personal in the Political in 'September 5'

Screenwriter Moritz Binder absorbed much about the 1972 terrorist attacks at the Munich Summer Olympics long before tackling the script for September 5.

“My parents were at the games,” he said, “and they were telling me about how it felt… to represent that we are a new Germany, a new generation, liberal, open and peaceful, and how it felt when these tragic events took place.”

Directed by Tim Fehlbaum, September 5 dramatizes the day a militant Palestinian group took the Israeli team hostage in the Olympic Village from the perspective of the ABC Sports crew who found themselves yards away from the standoff. Eleven Israeli athletes and coaches eventually died in what became a pivotal moment in journalism history, highlighting how media coverage impacts unfolding events.

Since its release in December, September 5 has earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, co-written by Binder, Fehlbaum (The Colony), and Alex David. (We’ve admired how the script integrated exposition and used an audience’s expectations to create drama and tension.)

“It was just pure relief and joy and everything within, like, a fraction of a second,” Binder said of the nomination. “It’s so flattering to be there…I think I have to process it for quite some while.”

The Munich native, who still lives in the German capital city, recently talked with Script via Zoom about how his experience with documentaries and sense of duty to these events informed his writing.

“A Magic Moment”

Binder initially worked as a TV journalist before studying documentary film at the University of Television and Film Munich, which Fehlbaum also attended. Binder developed the story for the 2024 feature comedy Alles Fifty Fifty, but September 5 is his first official feature writing credit.

Related: Emotionally Truthful on the Page: An Interview with ‘Unstoppable’ Screenwriter John Hindman

“This whole approach was really kind of my home turf, this deep research and getting into the details,” he said.

The idea for September 5 formed once the state archive in Germany announced it was releasing new files in 2022 on the 50th anniversary of the Olympic attack. Inspired by the Oscar-winning 1999 documentary One Day in September about these events, Fehlbaum wondered what these files might hold.

Their initial research turned up familiar material from police and local politicians but also analysis about how the ABC Sports coverage was a changing point in media history. Binder said he and Fehlbaum arranged what they thought would be a short Zoom call with Geoffrey Mason, who at the time had been a thirtysomething junior producer.

“We thought, let’s talk to him for maybe an hour or something; he can tell us his side of the day,” Binder said. “And this Zoom call got longer and got longer and got longer. …His perspective was so timely because of the questions they [the sports crew] had to ask themselves; they resonated so much with Tim and me as media people as well… Tim and I were looking at each other and saying, ‘Maybe this is not a perspective. Maybe this is the movie.’ That was a magic moment.”

Fehlbaum immediately envisioned the film like “a submarine movie, the same atmosphere, people disconnected from the outside, just having the monitors as windows to the outside,” he said.

Rewrites Through Research

Centering the story around the ABC Sports crew made Mason the main character, played by John Magaro (The Agency). The research and the production design helped recreate the ABC Sports studio with its bulky cameras, tape reels, film canisters, handheld radios, and clumps of cables, but the filmmakers also gained access to ABC’s original footage and audio, setting up what one review called “a conversation with the past.”

“That was quite a challenge, as you can imagine, because from a creative point of view, we said, ‘We need this footage. We need to be authentic,’” Binder said.

Initially, ABC and its owner, the Walt Disney Company, declined. Fortunately, the real Mason said he knew Bob Iger, who had retired as Disney CEO in December 2021 but then returned nearly a full year later. A producer asked Mason to email Iger on the filmmakers’ behalf, and Iger agreed.

The archive material arrived piece by piece, Binder said. “Before that, we only had snippets, like open-source material or something that was written down in the biographies,” such as famed broadcaster Jim McKay noting how he had interviewed Israeli weightlifting coach Tuvia Sokolovsky, a hostage who had escaped.

Days before filming, the writers obtained the full clip of this interview where they saw for the first time that ABC was losing its satellite access while interviewing Sokolovsky.

“We approached the producers and said, ‘We have to open up the script again. We have to include this,’” Binder said. “That was the challenge and the blessing at the same time to have this real material.”

The actual footage helped with the tone as well. “The actors could see [McKay] and how he reacted in that moment. And that kind of set a tone, not only for the script but also for the acting to not go over his emotion.”

Urgency, Imagery, and Teamwork

Other challenges involved balancing the pacing with the power of imagery. Mason had told the filmmakers that the day felt like “a rush,” Binder said. “Every question they had to ask themselves had like a ten-second window, and it only came to him what had happened that day when he was back in the hotel. So it was really this feeling that we are trying to get across, this adrenaline rush, not always in a positive way, but trying to get it done.”

While that urgency is there on the page and in the performances, the writers discussed how much to describe for readers, particularly in moments such as when the crew sees the black-and-white shot of the masked gunman on the athletes’ balcony for the first time. Binder alluded to the idea that in theater, it’s more effective to show how servants react to a king than the king himself.

Related: Creative on Her Own Terms: How 'The Last Showgirl' Screenwriter Kate Gersten Finds Discipline Through Dance

“You can describe the image as much as you want, but if you describe the effect it has on the crew, then you can feel the power, no matter what the image is,” he said. “I think that was always very important to us that that you can feel the atmosphere, the tension and the emotion in the room. To most people, those pictures are kind of iconic. They’re found in history books. But how did it feel for people that day, when they watched live? That was more interesting to us.”

One of his favorite characters in the film is Marianne Gebhardt, a fictional translator played by Leonie Benesch (The Teachers’ Lounge). She represents not just the translators who helped all the broadcasters that day but the “new generation of Germans that had put so much high hopes in these new games,” like his parents.

“I think we managed to write her quite well, but in the end, this last scene with Geoffrey Mason, where they say goodbye, in a way, and she’s devastated, I wrote way too much dialogue,” he said. “I wrote so much, you know, just to make a point again. …I think that maybe is a common trap for writers that you try to write up the point you try to make.”

Benesch and Magaro asked, “Can we lose some of those lines?” Binder, who was on set, worked with the two, cutting line after line.

“It was astonishing to me to see that we didn’t need those anymore because it was in their faces,” he said. “I owe so much to John and to Leonie, who really helped bring this scene to life and make it like real human beings and not concepts. And I love to tell that story because it makes clear that this whole movie is about teamwork..."

“Even the story kind of developed through teamwork,” he adds. “For me, the research process is so rich and beautiful that you sometimes get stuck in details. It’s very good to have someone, and I had it like with Tim, a partner who is so much into rhythm and finding the core of each scene.”