BRYAN FOGEL

DBryan Fogel’s 2017 documentary, Icarus, took on no less a foe than Vladimir Putin, won Netflix its first-ever Academy Award for a feature film, and drew worldwide acclaim. But when Fogel turned to making

The Dissident, about the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, he couldn’t find financial backers. “They said, ‘Oh, you’re going to take on the Saudis? Good luck with that,’ ” Fogel recalls. So he spent hundreds of thousands of his own dollars and more than a year in

Turkey gaining the trust of sources, including Khashoggi’s widow, before accepting funding from the Human Rights Foundation to complete the film.

The Dissident received a standing ovation at the 2020 Sundance festival, with an audience that included Netflix CEO Reed Hastings himself. But afterward, “we didn’t have a single offer from a single distributor,” Fogel says. He blames business ties between American companies and Saudi Arabia, which is heavily invested in U.S. tech, media, and entertainment companies, holding stakes in Facebook, Disney, Live Nation, and others; it also backs Softbank’s Vision Fund. The Dissident still managed to have a big impact: After it was screened for memdirector bers of Congress and the Biden administration, the U.S. government declassified a bombshell intelligence report revealing its assessment that the kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, directly approved Khashoggi’s killing— and announced new visa restrictions banning people from the U.S. who engage in “counter-dissident activities.” But Fogel remains disappointed that Biden stopped short of sanctioning MBS himself, and Fogel ultimately made

The Dissident available on demand via platforms such as itunes and Prime Video. “I went out there and risked my life,” says Fogel. “Everybody who helped me make this film [and I], we know the world wants to see it.”