One Day in September
One Day in September is a documentary from 1999, reliving the events of the hostage-taking of Munich in 1972, when a Palestinian terrorist command during the Olympic Summer Games of 1972 eleven Israeli athletes team took hostage and later killed.
Content
Is documented exclusively with original recordings and interview recordings. The film begins with a commercial of the Munich office of Tourism, to then pass on to interviews with the survivors of the Israeli athletes. In the course of different observers and officials have their say, including Ulrich Wegener, founder of the GSG 9
The hostage situation is examined from the viewpoint of many eyewitnesses, including from the former German security team. This particular failings of the German security forces are showing that rejected the help of Israeli anti-terror experts and wanted to end the hostage situation, which then ended disastrously.
At the end of the film refers to the hijacking of the Lufthansa aircraft Kiel to Zagreb, with the 29 October of the same year, the three arrested terrorists were freely pressed. Based on the (not documented in the film) statement of the Palestinian hijackers the affair of the LH 615 is represented as a " conspiracy " that the German government is said to have "organized" in " collusion " with the Palestinians, both to future terrorist attacks to avoid on German soil as well as the trial of the terrorists in the operational shortcomings in counter-terrorism would become known. Ulrich Wegener believed that this interpretation of events is true. Hans -Jochen Vogel insinuated without further details, that the then Chancellor Willy Brandt had no alternative to a covert operation.
Background
Interviewed persons coming
Actor Michael Douglas acts as the narrator of the film, in the German version speaks Otto Sander the accompanying commentary.
The film includes the first of a Western journalist guided interview with Jamal Al- Gashey, the only hostage-taker of Munich, who has survived the operation wrath of God, the Israeli retaliation against the terrorists until today.
Furthermore, to say:
- Hans -Dietrich Genscher, then Minister of the Interior of the Federal Republic of Germany
- Ankie Spitzer, widow of fencing coach Andre Spitzer assassinated Israeli
- Anouk Spitzer, daughter of Andre and Ankie Spitzer, who never met her father
- Ulrich Wegener, then liaison officer of BGS in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, after founding commander of the anti - terrorist unit GSG 9
- Zvi Zamir, then director of the Mossad
- Representatives of the International Olympic Committee
- Survivors members of the Israeli Olympic team
- Hans -Jochen Vogel, Mayor of Munich during the successful Olympic bid, at the time of the attack already a member of the German Bundestag
Awards
The film won the Oscar for Best Documentary and the Golden Camera Awards in the category of film in 2000 - International.
Also, he was twice awarded the British Independent Film Award: The Douglas Hickox Award were for director Kevin Macdonald, the person responsible for the section Justine Wright was honored as Best Newcomer.
Furthermore, it was One Day in September each for the prize for the best documentary at the International Documentary Association, the European Film Awards, nominated the Online Film Critics Society Awards, and the Satellite Awards.
Criticism
Roger Ebert praised the film as exciting, but criticized the inappropriate use of footage from Nazi Germany and tasteless film montages of body images and rock music (Deep Purple's Child in Time here is using ). Moreover, in his view, should have been made after the question of why the Palestinians have committed the hostage-taking. The key messages of the film, he does not agree, and he complained that the film was awarded an Oscar, without that he had been shown previously only in a single cinema.