The Dissident

Bryan Fogel, winner of the 2018 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary for ‘Icarus’, turns his sights on the murder and dismemberment of the Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s thugs in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. Pairing up with Khashoggi’s friend, fellow Saudi dissident, and social-media star Omar Abdulaziz, now exiled in Montreal, Fogel puts together a frightening and absolutely damning case through access to insider info and interviews with Turkish police and UN officials, as well as with Khashoggi’s fiancée Hatice Cengiz. This portrait of unchecked power run amok is chilling stuff, indeed…

‘Fogel’s documentary about the Khashoggi murder may not reveal anything substantially new, but it’s a fierce, forceful and highly illuminating film, set out with clarity and verve… Livid that his turf had been encroached on, [Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s] outrage and document-dump did all the work that might have taken investigative journalists years. But there are gripping details… It is a horrible story of state-sponsored violence from arrogant bullies who calculated—rightly—that they would get away with it.’—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian