Netflix has just added an Oscar-nominated, ‘all-time great’ journalism thriller

Released in 2025 and holding a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score, this movie deserves a much bigger audience.

Released in UK and Irish cinemas in February 2025, the movie approaches the real-life events from a different angle. The story is told entirely from the perspective of the ABC Sports broadcasting crew (led by Peter Sarsgaard).

They thought they were going to be covering the Olympics. Instead, they ended up providing live coverage to the world of the ongoing hostage situation.

With its cast also including Ben Chaplin, John Magaro, and Leonie Benesch, September 5 is a brilliantly acted, nail-bitingly tense thriller.

Yet, as we witness these sports journalists learning on the fly how to cover a hostage crisis, the film also becomes a very authentic, fascinating portrayal of all that needs to be considered when providing live coverage of an ongoing news event, particularly one with such real human stakes.

We believe it's one of the all-time great journalism films, comparable to All the President's Men, Network, Nightcrawler, and Zodiac.

JOE's interview with September 5's cast and crew

Ahead of September 5's cinema release, JOE spoke to its co-writer and director Tim Fehlbaum (who was Oscar-nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category for his work on the movie), as well as his lead actors.

A Swiss director, Fehlbaum said he became interested in the real-life historical events while studying film in Munich. However, it was only when he met the real-life Geoffrey Mason (played by John Magaro), who served as head of the ABC Sports control room on that fateful day, that he came up with the movie's unique approach to the story.

"It came from a conversation that we had with someone who really experienced that, who was in that room working as a young man for ABC Sports, coming into the studio thinking there would be another day reporting on the Olympics and then suddenly this tragedy happened," the director explained.

"He was in that control room during all these hours, during this 22-hour marathon of broadcasting. He experienced how they made that switch as a sports broadcast crew to report on the dramatic situation.

"Listening to his stories and learning what challenges they faced, what questions were asked in the control room, that seemed so relevant and so also worth a movie."

The movie depicts a major turning point in journalism towards a 24-hour news cycle, which we discussed with the cast.

On this topic, Sarsgaard told JOE: "[My character] Roone Arledge (president of ABC Sports) was really about trying to get the most eyes on the channel as possible. He started off doing that with sports, and he was quite effective with Wide World of Sports and then the Olympics.

"Then he took that into straight news, and there was quite a bit of entertainment in his news and celebrity anchors and things like that.

"I think this was a moment where better intentions were involved, where Roone really was just trying to tell this story in the best way possible. It was when they realised afterwards how many people had tuned in to watch this that they tried to repeat it in the future with live coverage of these events.

"And why do we need live coverage of a hostage crisis? I mean, certainly the people trying to help in the crisis need to know what's going on minute by minute. But I'm not sure that news helps with that and, a lot of the time, news becomes part of the story."

His co-star Ben Chaplin, who plays Marvin Bader, ABC Sports' head of operations, added: "Or [news] changes the outcome and we'll never know whether it did or not, right? Because it happened."

As for what makes journalists so compelling as the lead characters in a story, Sarsgaard told JOE: "Well, they're storytellers. It's why lawyers are compelling to watch on screen. A prosecuting lawyer is a storyteller. He's telling the most plausible story, and I think storytellers are always appealing.

"Journalists are also after something. They have a goal. You are trying to get the interview with this person to be able to tell this story."

Jumping in, Chaplin added: "Or expose something, uncover something," to which Sarsgaard responds: "It's set up perfectly for the structure of a movie."

Watch the trailer for September 5 right here:

Magaro - who said that journalism was "forever changed" on the day that September 5 depicts - also remarked on the appeal of journalists on screen: "I think it's the discovery. It's kind of like a mystery in a way, like a Sherlock Holmes.

"I think there's something about the discovery, the solving of a puzzle, the piecing it together that is inherent to journalism. I think it's that component that makes journalism thrillers really, really exciting.

"People like to see a puzzle put together, and that's what we're doing in this. We're figuring out how to broadcast this. Where problems are being presented, we're figuring out how to solve them in real time.

"And then if you add the component of it being live on the air and life-and-death circumstances, then I think it just ups the stakes even more."

Leonie Benesch, who plays Marianne Gebhardt, a translator for the broadcasting crew, noted as well: "I also think that journalism is one of the pillars of democracy. It's a profession that everyone has an opinion about.

"These days, it's become very fashionable to hate on journalists and blame them for a lot of the things that go wrong in the world. But I do think it's just one of those professions where - it may not be accurate - everyone has an idea of what that means and how they would do it better, so I think there's just a genuine interest."

Where can you watch September 5?

September 5 has just been added to Netflix in Ireland and the UK.

American viewers can stream the movie on Paramount+ and Prime Video.