“September 5” withstands scrutiny as a remarkably authentic portrayal of modern world history.

While the events it chronicles are now more than 50 years old, the issues this film presents remain all too relevant to both the consumers and the producers of news media as a whole.

“September 5” opens with the ABC Sports crew covering the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, in what was then West Germany. It was the same day the Palestinian militant organization Black September took members of the Israeli Olympics team hostage in the Olympic Village.

What made this terrorist attack all the more unprecedented was that it took place practically across the street from ABC’s studio, from which they were broadcasting the Olympics live.

Many moviegoers have no firsthand experience with electronic communication of that era and it’s a sharp contrast to our virtually instantaneous present-day standards. I appreciated the granular detail this film devotes to depicting how much of television broadcasting had to be done literally by hand.

Not only did they not have cell phones or the internet, broadcast crews had to apply each letter to the captions at the bottom of the screen, like lining up the text on a Gutenberg printing press, while reporter Peter Jennings’ voice was transmitted on-air by patching in the wires from a partially disassembled landline telephone.

The events of “September 5” weren’t that far away from World War II, recent enough that its scars were visible in the 1970s. We see that when ABC Sports head of operation Marvin Bader (played by Ben Chaplin), who is Jewish, asks a young German translator (played by Leonie Benesch) what her parents knew about what their country was doing during World War II.

This preexisting cross-cultural friction within the ABC studio — which also included Jacques Lesgards (played by Zinedine Soualem), a French broadcaster with Arab heritage — leads to flare-ups during debates of how to classify Black September. Jennings (played by Benjamin Walker) draws on his Middle Eastern experiences to caution against labeling them “terrorists.”

Ethical dilemmas abound as often as technical challenges in “September 5,” as the studio sends ABC employee Gary Slaughter (played by Daniel Adeosun) into the Olympic village, disguised as an athlete, to trade out film reels with the on-location camera crew — an audacious stunt that they actually pulled in real life — while Bader debates what should be aired with his colleagues.

Bader’s sparring partners in these debates are ABC Sports president Roone Arledge (played by Peter Sarsgaard) and the studio’s control room head, Geoffrey Mason (played by John Magaro).

Sarsgaard is no stranger to turning moral conflicts over journalistic practice into compelling drama, given he played The New Republic editor Charles Lane in 2003’s “Shattered Glass.” Magaro didn’t really catch my attention as an actor until “The Agency” on Paramount+ last year.

Sarsgaard is unflappably effective, like a veteran pilot maintaining a smooth cruising altitude regardless of the surrounding turbulence, while Magaro executes an amazingly empathetic performance, like an adult Peter Parker who finds himself dropped into Perry White’s big chair.

What makes Magaro’s portrayal of Mason so easy to root for is that we see how much he cares about not only doing his job well, but doing it right, which is doing right by all involved. That makes it more agonizing when none of his good intentions can prevent it all from going wrong.

An especially chilling moment comes when the broadcast crew turns a camera toward a room occupied by the terrorists, and sees them watching the live transmission of what’s happening.

Every journalist’s worst nightmare is to become part of the story, and it’s worse if its the result of our coverage and involvement.

Although the German translator was not based on any individual person in real life, I welcomed Benesch’s presence, acting as an aggregate perspective of younger Germans as a whole back then, who were anxious to avoid any of their nation’s bad history being repeated on their watch.

“September 5” is worth watching, as long as you set aside some time to recover afterward.