One Day in September (2000)

Synopsis: ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER is a unique and powerful documentary that tells an important story in an exciting and dramatic style that one doesn't typically associate with the genre. The film is about the... ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER is a unique and powerful documentary that tells an important story in an exciting and dramatic style that one doesn't typically associate with the genre. The film is about the Black September terrorist action at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It relies on interviews and archival news footage of the actual events, which personalize the story of the doomed Israeli athletes and the Palestinian terrorists who held them captive while the world held its collective breath. Also documented, in painful detail, is the astonishing ineptitude and indifference of the West German police and the insensitivity of the International Olympic Committee. Director Kevin MacDonald makes excellent use of news footage, promotional films, and the music of the early 1970s. He also uses interviews with many of those involved, including an on-camera interview with surviving terrorist Jamal Al Gashey and an in-depth interview with Ankie Spitzer, the widow of one of the Israeli coaches who was killed. But what makes the film so compelling is the shrewd way MacDonald brings these elements together to make a suspenseful, heartbreaking record of this tragic event. MacDonald sought to make a "documentary thriller" with this film, and he succeeded. [More]

Starring: Gerald Seymour, Ankie Spitzer, Anouk Spitzer, Jamal Al Gashey

Starring: Gerald Seymour, Ankie Spitzer, Anouk Spitzer, Jamal Al Gashey, Alex Springer, Gad Zabari, Shmuel Lalkin, Manfred Shreiber, Walther Troger, Ulrich K. Wegener, Hans Dietrich Genscher, Schlomit Romano, Magdi Gohary, Dan Shillon, Zvi Zamir, Heinz Hohensinn, Esther Roth, Hans Jochen Vogel

Director: Kevin MacDonald

Director: Kevin MacDonald
Producer: John Battsek, Arthur Cohn
Composer: Alex Heffes, Craig Armstrong
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

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