Russell Baillie
Bryan Fogel’s Oscar-winning first doco focused on state-sponsored sports doping. His latest exposé takes aim at state-sponsored murder.
It’s not the grim details about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi that make The Dissident so chilling. There are plenty of those in the riveting two-hour documentary, which examines the 2018 killing of the Washington Post columnist in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he had gone to pick up documents allowing him to marry Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz, who waited outside. Khashoggi was sedated, killed and dismembered by a 15-strong team of Saudi agents. His remains have never been found. But the disquieting factors aren’t just in the forensic investigation of what happened. Khashoggi’s state-sponsored assassination and its attempted cover-up are all part of the kingdom’s campaign to coerce and silence the dissident voices of exiled citizens.
Khashoggi’s murder is at the centre of a film that plays like a geopolitical true-crime story and espionage thriller. It includes previously unseen police footage from Turkey’s investigation into the killing, audio and transcripts from the bugged consulate and interviews with a presidential adviser, a chief prosecutor and a police investigator. Interwoven throughout are two personal stories – that of the grieving Cengiz’s fight for justice and of Omar Abdulaziz. Exiled in Canada, Abdulaziz is a young activist and video blogger Khashoggi had started helping in his fight against the Saudi propaganda machine on Twitter, a platform used by more than a third of the country’s 34 million population.
Abdulaziz believes it was Khashoggi’s involvement with him that may have signed his death warrant more than his role as a commentator in mainstream media.
Around it American director Bryan Fogel weaves a story of social-media manipulation, cyber espionage, and the see-no-evil nature of US-Saudi relations. The film shows then-President Donald Trump shrugging off saying anything about the murder, not wishing to offend the Saudi regime and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (“MBS”). This month, the Biden administration released a report concluding that the Crown Prince approved the assassination. It announced sanctions against some lower-level Saudi officials but not MBS himself.
The Dissident is Fogel’s second documentary. His first was Icarus, about Russia’s state-sponsored doping programme for Olympic athletes. It won him an Oscar. His latest has met with wide acclaim since its debut at the Sundance Film Festival last year. But it’s not going to win another Academy Award, as it hasn’t made this year’s doco shortlist. And although Icarus was picked up by Netflix, the company and every major American distributor and streamer passed on The Dissident. That included Amazon Prime, owned by Jeff Bezos, the proprietor of the Washington Post. He also features in the film, speaking at a Khashoggi memorial alongside Cengiz in Istanbul, and as a victim of Saudi phone hacking sparked by spyware on a WhatsApp message sent to him by MBS.
It seems offending the oilrich country, its royal family and the nation’s vast international investment funds has made The Dissident too hot to handle. Fogel spoke to the Listener from Los Angeles.
What was the moment when you thought: I need to do this story?
It was almost immediately following the admission that Jamal was murdered inside the Saudi consulate. The big variable to me was whether I’d be able to gain the access needed to tell the story as I saw it. That was with Hatice Cengiz, Omar Abdulaziz and the Turkish Government.
How did you build trust with them?
Had Icarus not been the film that it became and had it not earned the Oscar, it is unlikely that I would have been able to get the access and trust that I did. In the case of Hatice, she researched me and saw Icarus and how respectfully we handled really sensitive and personal subject matter, and how we worked to protect
Khashoggi’s assassination plays like a geopolitical true-crime story and espionage thriller.
Grigory Rodchenkov [the head of the Russian anti-doping agency]. It gave her confidence. As for Omar, he was able to appreciate the integrity we employed when dealing with a whistleblower. Similarly, the Turkish Government realised we didn’t come to this film with a preconceived agenda – we were interested in telling the truth.
Did Icarus give you the confidence to take on something this big?
It certainly helped gain access. The wonderful journey of Icarus, and the impact that it made, really allowed me to sink my teeth into the story of Jamal.
Did you know of Khashoggi beforehand?
Honestly, I hadn’t been following him, and as much as he was clearly a huge voice and well respected, we just weren’t aware of his writing and work. As this story came forward to the world, I started reading what Jamal had been writing about and decided that this was a story I really wanted to try to tell.
When did you realise you had a thriller on your hands?
From the outset. I would never have taken on the film had I not believed that it was a thriller. From the very beginning, we were always thinking, ‘How do we craft a thriller?’, in the way that we shot it and the way the film came together. Cinematically, my goal was to create a film that felt like a scripted feature thriller that just happened to be real. That comes in the editorial decisions we made about how we were going to ultimately
If I was scared, then I shouldn’t be making these films. I try not to look over my shoulder.
tell that story, like the choice to start with Omar in a hotel room and have a drone flying in there. They were purposeful choices to try to engage the audience, and if you can elicit that emotional response and really care about the film, hopefully, that can drive change and action.
There’s also heavy use of computer animation to illustrate the online and hacking elements of the story and the Twitter war between the dissident “bees” and the Saudi regime’s “flies”.
We wanted to lean into all those cyber elements and create that world of cyber espionage, and it was a question of, cinematically, how could we actually bring that to life? How can we make this visual? The intention was to create a film that felt really big, that draws in an audience. My aim all along was to have a film that feels incredibly theatrical and that doesn’t play like a documentary. These were all decisions that we made in the crafting of the film, while staying completely truthful to the story and the facts.
You expressed disappointment last year when the film wasn’t picked up by a major distributor or streaming service. Are you similarly disappointed that the film didn’t make the Oscar shortlist, given the reaction to the film and that you are a previous winner?
Listen, I was disappointed and I think that the documentary branch of the academy and the voting process and the politics behind that probably really need to be looked at. But I don’t make films for awards. It is rare for someone to win an Academy Award and then essentially get nominated again. The academy likes to consistently award the underdog, and I think that was probably what happened. The accolades and response that the film was receiving, and, most importantly, why I made the film – because I was passionate about this story – remain unchanged. I mean, just to have won an Academy Award not only completely changed my life and the trajectory of the work I was able to do, but also it continues to guide that.
Given that in Icarus you took on Russia and in The Dissident you’ve taken on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, do you think you’ve put yourself in danger?
I’m always asked this question and my response is always the same, which is, if I was worried, if I was scared, then I shouldn’t be making these sorts of films. So, I try not to look over my shoulder, I just stay looking forward and do the best that I can do to tell these stories.