One Day In September Directed by Kevin Macdonald Produced by John Battsek and Arthur Cohn Narrated by Michael Douglas Running Time 92 mins   Certificate 15 Introduction and Outline The 1972 Olympic Games Detailed Film Synopsis Prduction Notes: Kevin MacDonald on One Day In September Broadcast Article: 25 August 2000

Introduction and Outline One Day in September is a new kind of thriller - one where real lives are at stake and every event is true. They were billed as the ‘Olympics of Peace and Joy’ but became the Olympics of terror - Munich 1972. An extreme Palestinian group called Black September held 11 Israeli athletes hostage in the Olympic village while the world looked on, incredulous. Using extraordinary archive footage, music and interviews with those who took part (including the only surviving member of the Black September group) One Day in September tells the dramatic story of what happened in Munich during those 21 hours.

The 1972 Olympic Games For the Germans, the 1972 Olympic Games had a greater than normal significance. 27 years after the end of the war, Germany was still regarded as something of a pariah state. The memory of the 1936 Berlin Olympics - the so-called Nazi Olympics - were still fresh in many people’s minds. The 1972 Olympiad was seen as an ideal opportunity to show the world that Germany and the Germans had changed; that the country was now open and democratic. For the first ten days, the Games were a triumph filled with great highlights. Mark Spitz won his seven gold medals, breaking seven world records in the process; gymnast Olga Korbut captured the heart of millions; and the Americans were beaten for the first time at basketball - by the Russians - in a controversial three seconds of extra time. In August 1936 the Olympic Games in Berlin turned into an advert for Nazi Germany. Find out as much as you can about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In the light of what you have found out, why would the Germans have been determined to use the 1972 Munich Olympics as a showcase for how much Germany had changed?

Detailed Film Synopsis 4:40am: On 5 September 1972, eight Palestinian terrorists, dressed as athletes, clambered over the perimeter fence of the Olympic village and broke into the Israeli team quarters. As they broke down the door to the Israeli apartment, the wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg tried to stop them and received a bullet through the cheek. The rest of the Israelis in the apartment were rounded up. The terrorists now asked Weinberg, bleeding profusely, to show them where the rest of the Israeli team was. Thinking quickly, Weinberg led his captors to apartment 3 where the wrestlers and weight lifters were. Being bigger and stronger, he thought that they might stand some chance of overpowering the terrorists. But it was not to be, and soon all five of the athletes in apartment 3 were captured and being led back towards apartment 1. As they were walking, wrestler Gad Tsabari pushed one of the terrorists out of the way and ran for his life into the underground car park which ran beneath the Olympic village. He zig-zagged as shots rang out after him. Heroically, the already wounded Moshe Weinberg now jumped on the terrorist who was shooting. He was shot and killed. News of the terror attack was quickly transmitted around the world. For several hours however, news was confused. Nobody was sure who was inside that room at 31 Connollystrasse and who had escaped. 6pm: The first ‘official’ contact with the terrorists came around . A policewoman called Annaliese Graes approached Isa, the terrorist leader, who was standing outside the Israeli apartment wearing a white hat and light safari-suit, his face was blackened with shoe polish. Isa handed Ms. Graes a ransom note. It demanded the release of 236 political prisoners, listed by name, from jails in Israel and elsewhere. Amongst them were Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Bader, the leaders of the German Red Army Faction. If this was not done by 12 noon, the hostages would be executed. 7am: Shortly after this time, the chief of the Munich police, Manfred Schreiber and the Mayor of the Olympic village, Walther Trager met with Isa. He repeated his demands to them while holding a hand grenade, with its pin pulled out in his hand. Meanwhile, another member of the group, who was known to the police as ‘Tony’ and wore a cowboy hat, leaned out of the window above with a machine gun. Another terrorist, Jamal al Gashey, was visible at the balcony door, wearing a stripy, wide-lapelled jacket. In Israel, the population awoke to hear the shocking news. They would remain glued to their radios for much of the day. Golda Meir, the Prime Minister, stated that in line with Israeli policy, they would not give in to the terrorists’ demands. Why do you think that Golda Meir refused to give into the terrorists’ demands? In your opinion, should democratic governments ever give into terrorists’ demands? Give reasons for your answers. In Germany by this time, the interior ministers of both the state of Bavaria (Bruno Merk) and the Federal Government (Hans-Dietrich Gensher) had entered into negotiations with Isa. They offered him an ‘unlimited sum of money’, which he rejected. Gensher then offered himself up as an alternate hostage. Isa again refused. Still the Olympics continued, as though nothing were happening. The International Olympic Committee appeared to be happy to brush the incident under the carpet for as long as possible, in the hope that it would end happily. For the massed ranks of the world’s press however, the attack was a far bigger story than the Games themselves. Thousands of cameras, and through them the world’s eyes, were focused on the events at Connollystrasse. As the deadline of 12 noon approached - negotiation became more frantic. The negotiators pleaded, pretending that they needed more time to get a definitive answer from Jerusalem on the release of the prisoners. With only minutes to spare Isa capitulated - he extended the deadline to five o’clock that afternoon. He also let it be known that a second Israeli who had been shot in the original break-in had now died of his wounds. This man was weight lifter Josef Romano. The Germans now decided that they had to take the initiative. In the first of several ill-conceived plans, at 2:15pm Trager and Schreiber walked to Connollystrasse carrying large, heavy boxes of food for the hostages. With them were two policemen dressed as chefs. Their hope was that more than one terrorist would come out to help carry the enormous boxes of provisions and could be rushed and over-powered, or that the ‘chef-policemen’ could gain entry. At the very least they hoped to find out the true number of terrorists. At this point the police thought there were five, but had no definite figure. Isa foiled the plan by carrying the boxes up to the hostages himself, one at a time.

3:50pm The Olympic Committee, bowing to intense international pressure, finally stopped the games. With two athletes already dead, flags were lowered to half-mast around the Olympic compound.

5pm: As the deadline approached, the Munich police chief asked for 24 volunteers to storm the Connollystrasse building. These volunteers were given machine pistols, dressed in brightly coloured athletes training suits and then dispatched to various strategic points around the target building and on its roof. The plan was to unscrew the ventilation shaft covers and climb down into the occupied apartment on hearing the code-word ‘sunshine’ on their radios. But as the deadline drew near, the Chief of Police realised that there was a fatal flaw to his plan. The entire operation was being filmed live by an East German film crew and the terrorists were able to watch the entire proceedings on a TV set in the Israeli quarters. At the last moment the plan was called off.

This time the terrorists refused to extend the deadline. Instead they made a new demand: they wanted a long distance jet placed at their disposal to fly them and their hostages to an unspecified Arab country. Seeing an opportunity to free the hostages, the Germans rapidly put together a rescue plan.

The plan was to fly the Arabs and Israelis by helicopter to Furstenfeldbruck, a military airport some 20 kilometres from the Olympic village. There a jet would be waiting on the runway as requested. However, on board the jet would be a group of policemen disguised as flight crew. When Isa and his deputy boarded the plane to check it out, the fake crew would overcome them. Meanwhile, five police snipers placed around the airfield would open fire on the remaining terrorists and armoured cars would rush in to rescue the hostages.

Back at the village, Isa asked to walk through the route that they would take from the apartment at 31 Connollystrasse to the helicopters that would carry them to Furstenfeldbruck. The Germans had thought that they might be able to attack the terrorists as they walked to the helicopters and had placed marksmen and armoured cars along the route. As Isa approached, he could see these policemen crawling away into the shadows. Now aware of the danger, he demanded a bus to drive them the few hundred yards.

10pm. A bus was brought, and the hostages and terrorists were transported in three groups to the two waiting helicopters. Looking on was the chief of police, Manfred Schreiber, who counted the terrorists as they appeared from the bus. He was shocked to see that there were eight, not five, as he had previously thought. Incredibly, however, nobody from the Olympic village thought to relay this information to the squad waiting at the airfield.

11:30pm: Just as the helicopters bearing the Palestinians and Israelis was landing, the fake crew on board the decoy plane - whose part in the rescue plan was crucial - took a vote amongst themselves and decided that they were under-trained and under-equipped and abandoned their mission.

Still unaware that there were eight terrorists and not five as they had been informed, and with no radio contact between each other, the five snipers now had the burden of single-handedly carrying out the ambush.

To make matters worse, the police now realised that they had forgotten to order the armoured cars to return to the airport and were still at the village.

Six of the terrorists got out of the helicopters. One remained in each helicopter guarding the hostages. Isa and his deputy went to inspect the aeroplane that was to fly them out. They found it empty, with no sign of a crew. They returned across the tarmac in a high state of excitement. As they did so the snipers opened fire. Their initial salvo was unsuccessful. Only two were killed or wounded. The others, including Isa, dived for cover under the helicopters. The German helicopter pilots rushed for cover in the surrounding darkness. One of the snipers (‘sniper 5’) did not fire a single shot, because the helicopters had been landed in the ‘wrong place’. He found himself in the direct line of fire of his fellow marksmen on the roof and with only a low wall for cover, no steel helmet or bullet-proof vest, he was hopelessly exposed. The Palestinians now returned fire vigorously, strafing the airport tower with their Kalashnikovs, trying to shatter the spotlights that lit up the area around the helicopters.

Only now - twenty minutes after the start of the attack - did the Police radio to Munich for the armoured cars to be sent. But they would not arrive on the scene for another hour because the approach road to the airport was now crowded with onlookers.

The hostages sat with their hands and feet bound inside the two helicopters while the fighting continued for another hour and a half.

12:30am: Suddenly a news flash went out, emanating from the German government. It announced that the rescue operation was a success: all the hostages were saved and all the terrorists dead or in prison. Around the globe, newspaper presses started rolling. They’re Free!’ screamed the headlines.

But those early reports were wrong. The fighting still continued in total confusion. During the fire fight, police reinforcements arriving on the scene with no knowledge of the whereabouts of their own men, mistakenly identified sniper 5 and the helicopter pilot who had fled for cover beside him, as terrorists. They opened fire on them, seriously wounding both men.

1:00am: Around this time the battle reached its crescendo. Most of the Palestinians were either dead or severely wounded. One of them now pulled the pin from a hand grenade and threw it into one of the helicopters. Filled with fuel as it was, the blaze was enormous. Simultaneously, another Palestinian fired a full clip of bullets into the Israelis in the other helicopter.

10am: The next morning, a memorial service was held at the huge Olympic stadium for the eleven dead Israelis and the one German policeman who had lost his life in the fire fight.

The bodies of the dead Israelis were flown home. The bodies of the five dead Palestinians were handed over to Libya, where they received a hero’s funeral:

The three surviving Palestinians - Mohammed Safady, Adnan Al Gashey and Jamal Al Gashey - were all seriously wounded and received treatment in a military hospital. But were never to stand trial.

Production Notes

Kevin MacDonald on 'One Day in September'

What I wanted to do with 'One Day in September' was to make a documentary different than anything I had seen before: a documentary thriller, one that would work as a film at the cinema. I wanted it to have a strong narrative grip and to pull the emotions of the audience, while at the same time investigating and revealing the extraordinary facts behind this event in a detailed and trustworthy way.

One of the key things that piqued my interest as a film-maker was the morbid connection between sport and murder. In some ways the Munich massacre was the ult imate transgression - the destruction of an ideal of peace and brotherhood. But as we are now only too well aware the Olympic movement is not as pure as snow - nor was it ever. In fact Avery Brundage, President of the IOC in 1972 was instrumental in the success of the 1936 so-called Nazi Olympics, persuading the US delegation to attend in the face of political opposition. He was friendly with Hitler and - in perhaps the first recorded case of IOC bribery - his construction company in the US was given the contract to build the new Germany embassy in Washington, as a reward for his help. There is, in other words, a cynical, even sinister, aspect to a sporting event like the Olympics - and perhaps even to the sportsmen and women who take part - that I was interested in exploring.

Perhaps the biggest problem we faced in making the film was simply to get people to talk on camera. For Instance, it took 6 months of persuasion and arm twisting to get Zvi Zamir, the ex-head of Mossad to agree to an interview. In Germany in particular there was a general reluctance to talk - a reluctance that naturally fuelled our sense that something major was being covered up. It took almost a year to get Hans Dietrich Gensher (who has never previously talked in public at all about Munich) to do a brief interview - in which he agreed to cover only very limited ground and refused to speak in English, a language in which he is fluent. An order was sent to all serving members of the Bavarian police not to speak to us. Retired policemen and women were threatened with loss of their pension. The one ex-policeman policeman who agreed to talk - Heinz Hohensinn - did so only because he had no pension to lose. Even so, he told us that pressure was applied by ex-colleagues to stop him from talking. In the end we managed to get just about everybody we wanted on camera - although there were several minor players, such as the marksmen and helicopter pilots who were unpersuadable, why should I be the first one to stick my neck out? one of them told me.

From the outset I wanted One Day In September to tell the story of Munich from every perspective - including that of the Palestinians. My initial enquiries directed at official PLO sources met with a stony silence. I was not even sure if anyone was left alive. I heard rumours that one, none or all three of the Palestinian survivors of Munich were alive - perhaps in Latin America, the Gulf or Africa....But through a series of lucky meetings (which I am reluctant to go into in too much detail, for obvious reasons) I found myself in contact with a Palestinian who knew all about the three survivors because he had grown up with them in the Chatila camp in Beirut. This man was able to tell me definitively that only one, Jamal al Gashey (his real name, like that of his colleagues, was not previously known) was still alive. The other two had been killed by the Israelis in the late seventies. He took me to meet their families, and the families of other members of the Black September squad. Many of them were still living in refugee camps.

Then, over the next 6 months my contact tried to persuade Jamal to emerge from hiding and talk. We argued that only by confronting his past would he ever be able to escape it. Now was the time to talk, as the monumental tide of peace rolled in slowly but inevitably over the Middle East. He agreed. Several meetings were arranged and cancelled at the last moment. Twice I flew to destinations in the Middle East to rendezvous with him and he did not show up. Finally, in May last year, Jamal travelled to Amman to do the interview. He was deeply paranoid and found it very difficult talking publicly about what he had done. With frequent diversions, tantrums and non-sequitur, it took almost 8 hours to record only 30 minutes of usable interview.
- Kevin Macdonald

For producer John Battsek, One Day in September was borne out of the disillusionment experienced whilst producing his first film The Serpent’s Kiss. He had found much of the experience of producing unpleasant and thankless. But inspired by the documentary When We Were Kings - about Muhammed Ali, Battsek felt he wanted to make a film in the same vein, using the style and music of the time and with the same emotional punch. ‘I vaguely remembered the Munich Olympics, Israeli athletes, terrorists and horror. As a huge sports fan it seemed amazing to me that I didn’t really know what had happened. Surely if they had been American or British athletes, we would all know everything about it and would probably never be allowed to forget.’

Battsek had been looking for the right project to work on with a like-minded friend, Kevin Macdonald. Macdonald wanted to create something wholly original, a documentary thriller that would work at the cinema. ‘We wanted to make this film as accessible as possible so that this story will at last make an impression on people’s memories. I wanted it to have a strong narrative and emotional grip while at the same time investigating and revealing the extraordinary facts behind this event in a detailed and trustworthy way,’ Macdonald recalls. Initial research revealed a truly remarkable story of mystery, conspiracy, tragedy, ineptitude and real human sadness. Much to the filmmakers’ amazement, it appeared to be ongoing; the families of the victims seemed to have been chasing the truth about what happened, as well as recognition and justice for their dead relatives ever since. They had met with nothing but total non-cooperation from all those who (one would have assumed) would want to do everything in their power to help, principally the Germans and the International Olympic Committee.

With the interest generated by their proposal, Andrew Ruhemann (Associate Producer - Passion Pictures), Macdonald and Battsek decided to risk funding a research trip to Israel in order to meet with the families of the victims and various other people who had been (and often still were) involved. However, after one of the main potential financiers pulled out, the process ground to a halt until Sandy Lieberson (an old colleague of Macdonald’s) suggested that Battsek call an associate of his - veteran producer Arthur Cohn. Battsek rang Cohn, a legendary film producer and winner of 5 Academy Awards (three for feature-length documentaries). Cohn politely and succinctly told him that he didn’t make documentaries any more. As a parting courtesy, Cohn asked him what the subject of the film was. 24 hours later Battsek was sitting opposite Cohn in a central London hotel discussing how they were going to go about making the film. ‘Here was this 5 time Oscar winner, who could be pulling rank and have a huge ego, who was continually stressing how we were all a partnership, constantly asking my advice and generally really getting his hands dirty,’ Battsek remembers.

After initial interest from News and Current affairs at the BBC, Nick Fraser, editor of Storyville, stepped up support for the film when others at the BBC were hesitating. ‘Nick was totally honest with his criticisms during editing, without ever trying to dictate and as such he helped us a great deal,’ Macdonald explains. Battsek followed by approaching Simon Perry and Cameron McKracken at British Screen with the project. British Screen had never previously invested in a non-drama feature, yet within a matter of days they had committed to a financial involvement in the film. The film had proved really hard to budget, since it was impossible to know who was going to pop out of the woodwork and agree to be interviewed at any point. With this type of situation, the production needed financiers who recognised that budgets could change at any moment. Cohn himself substantially financed part of the film.

‘Arthur also continually impressed upon us that we were making a new kind of feature film, a dramatic, thrilling and emotionally compelling feature documentary,’ Battsek enthuses.

Perhaps the biggest problem they faced in making the film was simply to get people to talk on camera. Setting up interviews in Israel was running fairly smoothly as the families of the victims were very co-operative from day one. Ankie Spitzer (widow of the murdered Israeli fencing coach) and her daughter Anouk both became instrumental in coaxing some of the less willing interviewees and collating all sorts of valuable information for the production. But it took six months of persuasion and arm twisting to get Zvi Zamir, the ex-head of Mossad to agree to an interview. He had been despatched to Munich by Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan to witness the events as they unfolded and had been so traumatised by what he had seen that he really did not want to be interviewed. ‘Zamir was key; firstly he was an eyewitness and secondly because he could give us an official Israeli perspective on the tragedy,’ Macdonald explained.

In Germany there was a general reluctance to talk, which fuelled their sense that something major was being covered up. It took almost a year to get Federal Minister Hans Deitrich Gensher, German Minister of the Interior (who has never previously talked in public at all about Munich) to do a brief interview. He agreed to cover only very limited ground and refused to speak in English, a language in which he is fluent. In similar late fashion, interviews with Don Shilon of Israeli TV and Gerald Seymour of ITN, were also conducted, and Cohn persuaded the former head of the Munich police, Manfred Schreiber. An order had been sent to all serving members of the Bavarian police not to speak to the filmmakers. Retired policemen and women were threatened with loss of their pension. The one ex-policeman who agreed to talk, Heinz Hohensinn, did so only because he had no pension to lose. Even so, he had been pressured not to talk by ex-colleagues.

When the opportunity arose to speak to the sole surviving terrorist Battsek and Macdonald were sceptical. It was to be the beginning of a meandering six month process which saw producer and director hiring wigs and moustaches to ship out to Africa for a former terrorist to disguise himself with. After countless arranged, rearranged and aborted interview dates, they filmed an interview with Jamal Al Gashey, a man who many had claimed did not exist. In the end there were only a few minor players, such as the marksmen and helicopter pilots who were not to be persuaded.

The archive search got off to a great start as Cohn was able to put the production in touch with the company that owned all the original 35mm footage shot by 8 world renowned film directors for the official 1972 film of the Olympics. The Amateur Athletic Federation in Los Angeles were happy to cooperate and Macdonald visited Los Angeles for the arduous process of sifting through hundreds of cans of original rushes that had not been opened for 28 years. Archives from all over the world had sent material, much of it on different formats and of pretty poor quality, yet the production team were determined to look through it all.

For Justine Wright (Editor) the opportunity of editing the film came totally out of the blue. Justine had been editing commercials and shortform documentaries for some time and she jumped at the chance to work on a feature length film. ‘Like so many people, I knew nothing about the event itself. I was intrigued by the contrast of sports and tragedy and also the vision that Kevin had of how he wanted the end product to look.’

Battsek, Macdonald and Cohn knew that a soundtrack featuring music of the time would add an extra dimension to the film, despite the fact that music of that era is extremely hard to come by, unless the production has significant amounts of finance. With music supervisor Liz Gallacher on board, the team set about trying to clear Macdonald’s difficult first choice music for the film, including Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’. ‘When Liz first heard that we wanted the track, she said in no uncertain terms that we were wasting our time,’ Battsek remembers, ‘but I just wouldn’t give up.’ With the help of various people, not least the band’s lawyer Robert Rosenberg, the track was cleared. It was the first time that they had cleared a song for a movie apart from their own concert film 'The Song Remains the Same'.

Broadcast Magazine Article: 25 August 2000

‘I walked out of the cinema after seeing When We Were Kings,’ recalls producer John Battsek, explaining the genesis of his Oscar-winning film One Day in September. ‘I was blown away by it,’ he says of Leon Gast’s documentary account of Muhammed Ali’s 1974 bout with George Foreman. ‘I was desperate to do something similar and the Munich Olympics just seemed to pop into my head.

What Battsek had in mind was a cinematic documentary, combining archive footage with new interviews and narrative techniques borrowed from Hollywood - what he calls a ‘documentary thriller’.

Feeling that the events of the 1972 games - when 11 members of the Israeli team were taken hostage and eventually murdered by Palestinian terrorists as their families watched on television - would be the perfect vehicle, Battsek approached director Kevin Macdonald, whose brother he knew from his time at film distributor Miramax.

With Macdonald on board, initial research, with the help of Passion Pictures associate producer Andrew Ruhemann, proved promising. There was the story of the bungling German authorities, who made a terrible situation worse. There were allegations of German government collusion in the faked hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner that allowed the three surviving terrorists to escape. In Israel the victims’ families were still awaiting a plausible explanation for the events.

Battsek, Madconald and Ruhemann first pitched the story to BBC news and current affairs, who were ‘kind of interested’. But it wasn’t until nearly a year later that their financial saviour arrived in the imposing shape of acclaimed Hollywood producer Arthur Cohn. ‘Arthur had said he’d never make another documentary,’ says Battsek, ‘but once I’d pitched the idea he was in London in 24 hours.’

‘We got a third of our funding from Arthur, a third from British Screen and the rest from Nick Fraser at the BBC - plus a few other places,’ reveals Battsek.

There were still problems, not least persuading potential interviewees to talk on camera. ‘Our major obstacle had been getting people in Germany to talk,’ says Battsek.

‘We’d been confronted with total non-cooperation, really arrogantly dismissed. They just wanted to brush the whole thing under the carpet.’

Relentless cajoling from Cohn began to turn the tide in Munich and then, in a major scoop, researchers tracked down the last surviving terrorist, Jamal Al Gashney, to his hiding place in north Africa.

Al Gashney had never spoken about the events at Munich. ‘I think maybe he felt he could live a freer life once he’d talked to us,’ explains Battsek. ‘But he kept changing his mind.’ In the end the BBC connection helped. ‘I think that when you say you’re the BBC, people feel that they’ll get a fair hearing.’

After ‘the endless archive research’ and filming, commercials and pop videos editor Justine Wright was hired. ‘It’s weird,’ she says ‘because I’d worked on an Adidas campaign, so I was used to cutting together old sports footage, but one of the exciting things was trying to make moving footage work with stills.’

‘The challenge was to give the film momentum and urgency.’ Wright laughingly admits to falling back on the ‘classic editor’s trick’ of panning around still images to create the illusion of motion. She also revelas how she and Macdonald ‘blew up photos so much that they came to pieces in front of our eyes’.

One photograph in particular, of Israeli fencing coach Andre Spitzer, is enlarged beyond the point where the image is discernible. The idea was ‘to depict his death’, explains Wright.

She happily concedes that her work brought a ‘commerical edge’ to One Day in September. The film revels in technical trickery from exagerated slow-motion and split-screens to moody shots of clouds and juddering cutting to music by Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. ‘It’s angry music for angry film-making,’ she adds. ‘What was difficult was sacrificing information for the narrative. Nothing in the film is given away,’ she says. ‘If you knew up front that Jamal Al Gashney is the last survivor (of the Olympic siege) it might have given his interview more weight. But we didn’t want to give away the fact right at the top that all of the hostages died.’

But is the treatment too commercial for such a serious subject? ‘A third of the people who’ve seen the film don’t agree with the way we did it, but we were always aware of trying to make something that people would want to watch.

‘It’s not supposed to be an easy film to watch,’ she admits,’ but as a film-maker you just have to do what you think is right.