Munich Games is a tense thriller series that coincides with the 50th anniversary of the infamous "Munich Massacre" which took place on September 5 1972 at the Olympics in Germany.
The world watched in horror when Israeli athletes and coaches were taken hostage in their rooms in the Olympic village by a Palestinian terrorist group calling itself Black September. Then, 21 hours later, after an attempted rescue at a Munich airfield went disastrously wrong. The days ended with 11 Israeli hostages killed by their captors, nine of them as they waited helplessly in helicopters on the runway.
Munich Games is a fast-paced multi-language thriller set 50 years later but is strongly tied to the events of 1972. In English, German, Hebrew and Arabic, it stars Seyneb Saleh, Yousef Sweid, Sebastian Rudolph and Dov Glickman. Created by the writer of global TV hit Fauda and tells the story of two agents, Israeli and German, who must work together to prevent a major terrorist attack 50 years after the original Munich Massacre.
So here's everything we know so far about Munich Games (also called Munich Match in some countries) coming to Sky Atlantic in the UK in autumn 2022.
Munich Games release date
In the UK, Munich Games starts on Sky Atlantic with its first two episodes to be shown on Friday September 9 at 9pm and 10pm. It's a six-part series, with double episodes shown weekly. The air date is not too long after the 50th anniversary of the Munich Massacre (which is September 5). All episodes will be available on NOW. Munich Games had its global premiere on June 28, 2022, as part of The New German TV Movie track at the Munich Film Festival.
The series will be available in all Sky markets including UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Austria & Switzerland.
Paramount Global Content Distribution owns the international distribution rights to the series outside the Sky markets. We will update when a US date and channel is announced.
* To accompany the series in the UK, Sky Documentaries broadcast 1972: Munich’s Black September on Sunday September 5, 9pm, which reconstructs the infamous Olympic massacre through archive footage and eyewitness accounts. This is now available on NOW catch up.
Is there a trailer for Munich Games?
Yes a trailer for Munich Games has arrived which shows all the tense dramas surrounding the fateful football match with Seyneb Saleh, Yousef Sweid, Sebastian Rudolph and Dov Glickman all in action. Take a look below...
What is the plot of Munich Games?
In Munich Games it's 2022 and, as a mark of peace and respect for the victims of the 1972 terrorist attack, a friendly football match between an Israeli and a German team is planned at the Munich Olympic stadium. Police and secret services on all sides are on high alert to ensure the security of the event.
Israel are particularly sensitive and Mossad agent Oren Simon (Yousef Sweid), who is stationed in Berlin, intercepts a message on the dark web just days before the match goes ahead. To ensure that history does not repeat itself, Oren, who is a computer analyst rather than a field officer, is sent to Munich to partner Maria Köhler (Seyneb Saleh), a German police officer (LKA) with Lebanese roots. Neither is comfortable with the arrangement. Oren is awkward around other people and impatient with German bureaucracy, while Maria doesn’t approve of Oren’s methods of bypassing official channels. But with only five days to go before the game, the pair face a race against time to find out who is behind the footage.
"Maria and Oren are two complex characters from different origins and emotional backgrounds who meet in an extreme situation and have to trust each other," explains director Philipp Kadelbach. "There’s a real ticking-clock structure to the plot."
For Maria, the situation is complicated by the fact that she is having a passionate, clandestine affair with Syrian refugee Monir Aziz (Roger Azar), one of the informants in the network she has built up in the Arab community. "Munich Games has everything that a good "feet-on-the-ground" show needs," says Kadelbach, who felt it was essential for authenticity that the characters spoke in German, Arabic and Hebrew as well as English for the six-part series. "Maria and Oren have more in common than they would like to think," he adds. "They cannot always distinguish between a professional assignment and private feelings."
Munich Games cast
In Munich Games Seyneb Saleh plays German police agent Maria Köhler who partners up with Mossad's Berlin agent Oren Simon, played by Yousef 'Joe' Sweid. Seyneb has previously starred in Mute and Dogs of Berlin whole Yousef is best known for Baghdad Central which was shown on Channel 4 in the UK.
Other international stars of Munich Games include Sebastian Rudolph as Michael Hahn, Doval'e Glickman as Jackie Igelski, Robert Maaser as Borsig, Goran Kostic as Bogdan, Seumas F.Sargent as Sam, Juliane Kohler as Jutta Zangler, Anton Spieker, Evgenia Dodina as Ahuva Igelski and Mehdi Meskar as Karim Abdelsalam.
Behind the scenes on Munich Games
Munich Games has multi-national team at its heart. Produced by Sky Deutschland, it's created by Michal Aviram (Fauda), directed by Philipp Kadelbach (We Children from Bahnhof Zoo, Perfume) and written by Aviram and Martin Behnke (Berlin Alexanderplatz). It is a co-production by Amusement Park Film, CBS Studios and Sky Studios.
Michal Aviram says: “I was really fascinated by the story, it was so powerful, people from Israel, Jewish, coming to Germany for a very peaceful sporting event, and you thought this could never happen again… after the war. It was like a knife to the heart and really influenced Israel and Germany in many ways.”
Previous movies about the 1972 Munich Massacre
In 2005, Steven Spielberg's Munich followed the events of 1972 but also what happened afterwards when the then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir sent Mossad agents out around the world on covert operations to murder those who'd organized the massacre. Her secret controversial edict was called Operation Wrath Of God. Stars of this movie included Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Geoffrey Rush, Michael Lonsdale and Lynn Cohen as Gold Meir.
Back in 1976 there was a made-for-TV movie called 21 Hours at Munich which depicted the events of the massacre from start to finish. It starred William Holden, Anthony Quayle, Franco Nero, Richard Basehart and Shirley Knight.
The highly acclaimed 1999 documentary film One Day in September, produced by Michael Douglas, spoke to the families of victims and those who took part in the negotiations with terrorists and the botched rescue attempt. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
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