In 1972, athletes from around the globe gathered in Munich, Germany for the Olympic Games. However, the Olympic spirit of brotherhood and peaceful competition was shattered when eight Palestinian terrorists invaded the athletes' quarters to take the Israeli team hostage while the world looked on, incredulous. Using extraordinary archive footage including the only surviving member of the Black September group, the film tells the dramatic story of what happened during those 21 hours in Munich.

Structured like a race-against-the-clock conspiracy thriller and using all the tools of what is now post-modern documentary, the film challenged convention and attracted a huge audience to become one of the pioneers of docs that were big hits in the cinemas - and won an Oscar for director Kevin Macdonald.