NEW YORK (AP) – Even before ‘The Dissident’ premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, director Bryan Fogel felt his explosive Jamal Khashoggi documentary was going to be a hard sell.
The film, available on-demand this week, was one of the most anticipated of last January’s Sundance. Fogel’s previous film, “Icarus”, about Russian doping at the Olympic Games, won the Academy Award for best documentary. “The Dissident” features audio recordings of Khashoggi’s murder, the participation of Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, and details of Saudi hacking attempts, including the infiltration of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ cell phone. Sundance audiences included Hillary Clinton, Alec Baldwin, and Reed Hastings, Netflix’s CEO.
At the screening, Fogel implored media companies not to be afraid. “In my dream of dreams, distributors will compete against Saudi Arabia,” he said. While driving in an SUV to the film’s Sundance after-party, a cheerful Fogel said he hoped Netflix, Amazon, HBO, or others would come forward – anyone who could give the film a global platform for the story. from Khashoggi, set as a deadly story, real-life geopolitical thriller in ‘The Dissident’.
But the rough road for “The Dissident” was already indicated. None of the streamers – many of whom bought Sundance’s top films – had asked to take a peek at ‘The Dissident’ before the festival – something to be expected from such a high-profile documentary from an Oscar-winning filmmaker.
“Many of the big streamers were actually there that day. Not their content heads. Their CEOs. I had hoped that would have led to, “We’re going to get behind this movie.” But it didn’t, ”Fogel said last month through Zoom from Los Angeles. “We didn’t offer $ 1, let alone $ 1 million – let alone the $ 12 million paid for ‘Boys State’, That’s a wonderful movie, but it’s about 17-year-old guys playing fake politics in Texas. “
Set in a brutal real political realm, “The Dissident” will finally debut on demand Friday. It was eventually acquired last spring, in a deal announced in September, by Briarcliff Entertainment, the independent distributor founded by Tom Ortenberg, the veteran film director who distributed “Spotlight” and “Snowden” as CEO of Open Road Films. After a two-week run in about 200 theaters (out of 800 due to the pandemic), “The Dissident” will be available for rent at places like iTunes, Amazon and Roku.
But the cool reception from bigger media companies to “The Dissident” – not because it wasn’t good (it has a 97% fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating from critics and a 99% rating from the audience. ) or important, but because it openly challenges the Saudi regime’s crackdown on freedom of expression – raises questions about the future of political films on ever-larger and potentially increasingly risk-averse streaming services.
Netflix et al have played a vital role in an exponentially growing documentary audience. But in the global pursuit of subscriber growth, media companies have sometimes capitulated to demands bordering on censorship. In 2019, Netflix removed an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s “Patriot Act” condemning the cover-up of Khashoggi’s murder following a Saudi complaint. Last month, The New York Times reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook has squashed an Apple TV + series about Gawker in development. Negative images of China, for old Hollywood studios and streamers alike, are usually off the table.
“When there is a huge amount of money at stake – business interest, shareholder responsibility, which will make us vanilla and not cause stress – it wins,” said Fogel. “As these companies get bigger and bigger, we see that the choices they make, including content, become less and less risky.”
For Fogel, the experience of “The Dissident” reflects Khashoggi’s silence. The film funded by the Human Rights Foundation, describes a plot to murder Khashoggi, a former Saudi insider turned columnist for the Washington Post and made moderate advocates for his native country to embrace freedom of speech and human rights. While retrieving paperwork for his wedding to Hatice Cengiz from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, he was murdered and his body sawn to pieces. Intelligence reports concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the murder. Mohammed denied that Saudi Arabia was behind the murder, but eventually admitted it was carried out by agents of the Saudi government. Mohammed has claimed it was not at his command.
The Dissident features interviews with Cengiz, Turkish authorities and United Nations investigators who deduced that Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, was hacked by a malicious file sent from Mohammed’s personal WhatsApp account.. The same hacking scheme was reportedly used for exiled activist Omar Abdulaziz, an employee of Khashoggi’s. Ultimately, “The Dissident” wonders why countries and companies continue to do business with a country that resorts to such methods by trapping and killing dissidents.
“I hope this film will keep Jamal’s name, Jamal’s life and values alive,” said Cengiz, on the phone from Istanbul. “I hope people will keep asking for more and more.”
President Donald Trump has refused to blame Mohammed for the murder, and is quoted in Bob Woodward’s latest book boasting that he “saved” the Crown Prince. President-elect Joe Biden has expressed a tougher stance on Saudi Arabia. Cengiz has called on the CIA to release its investigation into the murder.
She has also continued Khashoggi’s mission. “It was not my choice, but it is my life,” she says. That US movie companies may have liked “The Dissident,” she says, “is disappointing.”
“I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t buy this movie because this movie is about a very important crime in history,” said Cengiz. “This film is about someone who has fought for some very important values. That’s why they killed him. So that’s why we fight. “
In particular, Netflix’s shyness from “The Dissident” is “incredibly disappointing,” said Fogel. “Icarus” won Netflix its first Oscar. A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s reporting of ‘The Dissident’. In November, the streamer signed a production deal with Saudi studio Telfaz11 for eight films.
But Fogel is also clear about the potential dangers associated with spreading “The Dissident,” musing about the possibility of Saudi hacking or boycotting a distributor in the Middle East.
“Ultimately, those risk assessments took the place of whether their few hundred million subscribers would or would not want to see this movie,” says Fogel. It wasn’t just Netflix, it was universal. What I think Hollywood learned from the Sony hack is that the risk of embarrassment is too great. “
Ortenberg, on the other hand, was comfortable with the headache that “The Dissident” could cause. “The movie speaks for itself,” said Ortenberg, by phone from Los Angeles. He suggests “The Dissident” for consideration.
“It’s a shame,” Ortenberg says of other studios’ fears. “I’ve always seen that the entertainment film studios were in charge of important topics and not shy away from controversy, but embraced challenges and took up the challenge of making films on important topics and treating them with respect.”
Fogel sees a lack of international and corporate will to respond to human rights violations that are only getting worse, in Hollywood and elsewhere. Last week, Saudi State Security Court sentenced 31-year-old Loujiain Al-Hathloul to more than five years in prison for tweets advocating women’s right to drive and against male custody regulations. She has been in prison since May 2018 and said she was tortured and sexually assaulted by masked men during interrogations.
“I truly believe that people in such positions of power, with wealth and resources, if they are not willing to stand up for human rights violations like these, for what I consider to be the greater good of the planet, it is getting scarier. “, says Fogel.” We are all becoming less safe. “
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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP