The film chronicles the ABC Sports team at the 1972 Munich Olympics as they switched to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage in the Olympic Village.

Peter Sarsgaard stars as ABC executive Roone Arledge, while Magaro plays Mason, a young producer for the network’s Olympic coverage.

Magaro said he was initially drawn to the project due to Sarsgaard’s acting and Sean Penn’s involvement as producer. But he found himself captivated by the script. “It really reminded me of a lot of films that I love,” he said, All The President’s Men, Good Night, and Good Luck, Spotlight and Shattered Glass, which Sarsgaard also starred in.

All The President’s Men in particular most inspired him when preparing to play a journalist in September 5. “What Pakula did with that, I think that is the bar. That’s the gold standard of journalism movies,” Magaro said. “This was my chance to sort of step into that world.”

Leonie Benesch, who plays the team’s local translator Marianne, said she opted to not delve into anything related to the world of journalism until after the shoot was done, for the sake of her character. “Tim [Fehlbaum] and I decided it would be helpful to not read with everyone, to not actually know my way around a studio like that, because she’s thrown a little bit into a world that is not hers,” she said.

For Ben Chaplin, who plays the ABC Sports head of operations, the film is important now due to the ideas of what responsibility the media has in reporting and covering something and how the public then receives that.

“As soon as you point a camera at it or you put something on a phone to read, a piece of news, a piece of information — it has an angle, he said. “There’s no such thing as neutral, and I think it’s up to us because I don’t think you can put the genie back in the bottle.”

September 5 arrives in select theaters on November 29 before going nationwide on December 13.