Co-presented with Telescope Film

KINO! Film Salon is a monthly online club to discuss films from Germany.
 
How it works: Each month we choose a German film currently available to stream on U.S. platforms, watch it independently, and come together for a hosted conversation with other fans of German cinema.

For our April session, we picked the Oscar-nominated historical thriller September 5, directed by Tim Fehlbaum and co-starring Leonie Benesch (The Teachers’ Lounge). We’re excited to be joined by Moritz Binder, one of the film’s writers—don’t miss the chance to get his insider perspective on the film! It’s the 1972 Munich Olympics, and the excitement and camaraderie of the general competition quickly devolves into chaos when armed militants take Israeli athletes hostage, hoping to exchange them for political prisoners. A team of sports journalists finds themselves suddenly on the frontlines of a historic moment and debates whether to keep going and how to document the situation responsibly.

KINO! Film Salon host Jim Kolmar praises September 5 as “a volatile, unusually intimate depiction of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis. Tim Fehlbaum’s latest is a ticking time bomb of a thriller, told with clockwork narrative precision and whip-smart dialogue. With deft editing, breakneck pacing, and an idiosyncratic international cast, September 5 is a lean, gripping glimpse at a pivotal shift in how we consume information, what it takes to convey truth, and the desperate means employed by those empowered to do so.”

September 5 was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 2025 Oscars, and it received 10 nominations at the 2025 German Film Awards.

Hosted by Jim Kolmar

Jim programs for SXSW and Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival, and was a founding committee member of Festival Internacional de Cine Tulum (FICTU). He has participated in numerous international festival juries, panels, and committees.
 
KINO! Film Salon is a production of Telescope Film, in partnership with the German Film Office.

September 5
Dir. Tim Fehlbaum
Germany/USA, 2025
95 minutes
With Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Leonie Benesch, Ben Chaplin