A Portrait of writer Moritz Binder

Steven Spielberg would have nothing to do with him. And all he got from Harrison Ford was a pre-printed autograph card. When 16-year-old Moritz Binder contacted his heroes, he was bitterly disappointed. But 26 years later, the tide has turned.

Now, it would be quite normal for the two cinema greats to approach him. In the meantime, the Munich-born screenwriter has not only established himself in Germany; his thriller drama SEPTEMBER 5 - THE DAY THE TERROR WENT LIVE has also been nominated for a feature film Golden Globe and earned him a nomination for the Critics Choice Award. It is not surprising that he flirted with archaeology in his youth, having seen INDIANA JONES, but later he realised that his passion had more to do with the film character than with the profession itself.

His work as an author requires similar qualities, though, as he loves “immersing himself in worlds with their own language, logic and rules” and “doing research”. This explains why he started his career as a journalist and completed a degree in documentary film directing. This passion also prompted director Tim Fehlbaum and producers Thomas Wöbke and Philipp Trauer to commission him to write the screenplay for SEPTEMBER 5 – a film about the 1972 Olympic bombing as told from the perspective of US sports journalists. Moritz Binder had made a name for himself with work for director Alireza Golafshani (FIFTY FIFTY) and TATORT, among others. And he happened to have made a detailed study of the background to the Palestinian terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic team in a different context. It all made him the ideal candidate for the project, although the story’s focus only crystallised during the work: “We realised that the approach of telling the story from the media’s perspective was the most interesting.”

While Moritz Binder wrote the scenes, Tim Fehlbaum, his co-author, was responsible for “working out the film’s rhythm and its thriller-like atmosphere”. The third writer on board was Alex David, who was originally responsible for the English-language version, but also contributed “the American perspective on the character arcs”. The result was not only various nominations, but also unanimous praise from critics after the film celebrated its world festival premiere at Venice in 2024. At the beginning of January, 90 per cent of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were positive. Critics drew comparisons with James Brook’s BROADCAST NEWS and – appropriately enough – Steven Spielberg’s THE POST.

It is in Moritz Binder’s favour that he is capable of playing a very broad range. Parallel to his work on SEPTEMBER 5, he was writing scripts for the children’s series NEUE GESCHICHTEN VOM PUMUCKL (NEW STORIES FROM THE PUMUCKL) about a master carpenter and his pet goblin that only he can see. “The only thing that project has in common with SEPTEMBER 5 is that it’s set in Munich. I wrote one in the mornings and the other in the afternoons. That way they didn’t impede each other and I was able to use different sides of my brain,” he says with a laugh. However, there are obvious similarities in his approach to the two projects. He also immersed himself carefully into an unfamiliar world for the series – in this case the popular books by author Ellis Kaut and the corresponding radio plays. He even registered anonymously in a fan forum, to study the expectations of the community in detail. In the case of SEPTEMBER 5, his source material was extensive eyewitness reports and the investigation files, each of which ran to a few hundred pages. “It was close to documentary work,” he says.

He is currently writing the screenplay, together with Alireza Golafshan, for the latter’s judicial thrill­er ZOMA. To this end, he has had many conversations with lawyers and judges: “You get so many gifts during research that you don’t receive if you just sit at your desk and try to make something up.” But he is not interested in a sober reproduction of the facts. He quotes Charlie Kaufmann, who described dreams as the best writers: “Your brain is wired to turn emotional states into movies.” And he adds: “I can’t write a scene that I don’t feel beforehand; otherwise, the corresponding image just won’t materialise.” Will this attitude lead him into the American film industry, where he could work with his idols from the past? After all, he now has a US manager. His mum, however, remains unimpressed: “You stay at home,” she says. And he wouldn’t really have much against that: “When you see how many European films are successful in the USA, we can hold our heads up high.”

Rüdiger Sturm