The shocking true story behind thriller September 5

This week, the new thriller movie September 5 arrives in UK cinemas. It tells the tragic true story of the Munich Massacre — a 1972 terrorist attack perpetrated by the Palestinian militant group Black September — from the point of view of the sports broadcasters who pivoted from reporting on the Olympic Games to cover the violence.

The film, directed and co-written by Tim Fehlbaum, has earned a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars. It's an intense dramatisation of the real events, which plunged the 1972 Olympics into chaos at a time when the attention of the world was on Germany. Produced with the assistance of ABC Sports — and using archive footage from their broadcasts — it aims for as realistic a depiction of what happened as possible.

In the early hours of the morning on 5 September 1972, ABC reporters covering the Olympics in Munich heard gunshots coming from the Olympic Village. Eight members of Black September, led by Luttif "Issa" Afif, broke into an apartment building where delegates from numerous nations, including Israel, were living during the Games.

During the initial break-in, terrorists killed Israel's wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and wrestler Yossef Romano. They took nine hostages, made up of athletes and coaches, and demanded the release of various Palestinians and other militants being held prisoner in Israel. Some reports claim there was a list of just over 300 prisoners.

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According to journalist John K. Cooley — an expert in the Middle East — the situation was very delicate for German authorities. The event in 1972 was the first time the country had hosted the Olympics since the Hitler-run Berlin Olympics in 1936, so an attack against Jewish people on German soil was particularly fraught politically.

As shown in September 5, the ABC Sports broadcasting control room decided to pivot their coverage of the Games to focus on the hostage situation. Veteran sports broadcaster Jim McKay, best known for fronting Wide World of Sports, would go on to win an Emmy for his reporting around the crisis. McKay appears in the movie via archive footage.

It took until 3pm that day for the Olympics to be suspended — 12 hours after the first person was killed in the attack. German police began to mount an operation to rescue the hostages, which the terrorists learned about in advance by watching TV news. As police climbed the building, cameras broadcast the rescue attempt live, while the terrorists watched every step. Unsurprisingly, the police had to abort the operation. It was only then that press were removed from the Olympic Village.

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After this, German authorities faked an agreement with the terrorists that they would be given safe passage to Egypt via a nearby air base. Helicopters were deployed to transport the terrorists and hostages to the air base, where West German police planned an ambush. That ambush turned into a shootout, hampered by the officers' inexperience in these situations and the enormous shadows cast by helicopter blades.

The stand-off continued until the early hours of 6 September, when armoured police vehicles arrived on the scene. One of the hostage takers threw a grenade into one of the helicopters and, by the time police gained control of the scene, all of the hostages were dead, as well as a police officer. Five of the eight terrorists also died in the attack.

As depicted in September 5, initial news reports suggested that at least some of the hostages had been rescued. McKay corrected the record with a sobering moment on air, in which he said: "When I was a kid, my father used to say "our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realised". Our worst fears have been realised tonight. They've now said that there were 11 hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone."

The German authorities received heavy criticism for their poor handling of the situation. The entire Israeli team left the Games immediately, with other athletes and teams following suit. The three surviving members of Black September were arrested, but released a month later after a Lufthansa flight was hijacked.

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September 5 depicts all of this through the lens of ABC Sports president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and the team of reporters who, despite difficult moral questions, continued to cover the unfolding crisis in real time. It's a complex film about the tough role journalism plays in some of the worst things to happen to humanity.

September 5 is in UK cinemas now.