Alleged Saudi troll campaign targeting ‘Dissident’

BRYAN Fogel made the investigative documentary “The Dissident” to bring to light alleged free-speech suppression efforts by the Saudi government.

Now his film could be a target of the very forces he seeks to expose.

“The Dissident” saw as many as 500 low audience scores out of 2,300 flood the popular filmrating site Rotten Tomatoes on Jan 12, filmmakers said, an act they believe came from trolls operating on behalf of the Saudi government who wish to create a false sense of dissatisfaction.

The movie’s approval rating soon plummeted from above 95% to 68%.

A similar dynamic has also appeared to unfold on the movie site IMDb, which has seen 1,175 one-star reviews flood the site since Saturday. In the previous month, the movie rarely collected more than a few dozen such scores in a given day; many more users gave it the highest rating.

Thor Halvorssen, the founder and chief executive of the nonprofit Human Rights Foundation, which funded the movie said the surge of poor ratings for a film that was generally well-liked by both audiences and critics is what struck him as highly suspicious.

Fogel, the Oscar-winning director of “Icarus,” offers in “The Dissident” a searing criticism of the government of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman against the backdrop of the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, painting a portrait of a regime that will go to violent lengths to silence its critics.

It also documents “the flies,” scores of people working on behalf of Mohammed to keep positive topics about him trending and bad news out of the social media sightline, in the process creating a culture lacking opposition voices.

“The Dissident” had been receiving warm reviews from both professional critics and citizen filmgoers on Rotten Tomatoes since it was released in theaters last month and then made available on-demand on Jan. 8, before the suspected Saudi campaign began last week. — The Washington Post