Bryan Fogel’s first documentary, “Icarus,” helped uncover the Russian doping scandal that led to the country’s expulsion from the 2018 Winter Olympics. It also won an Oscar for him and for Netflix, which released the film.
For his second project, he chose another subject with global interest: the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian dissident and Washington Post columnist, and the role that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, played in it.
A film by an Oscar-winning filmmaker would normally garner plenty of attention from streaming services, which have used documentaries and niche movies to attract subscribers and earn awards. Instead, when Mr. Fogel’s film, “The Dissident,” was finally able to find a distributor after eight months, it was with an independent company that had no streaming platform and a much narrower reach.
“These global media companies are no longer just thinking, ‘How is this going to play for U.S. audiences?’” Mr. Fogel said. “They are asking: ‘What if I put this film out in Egypt? What happens if I release it in China, Russia, Pakistan, India?’ All these factors are coming into play, and it’s getting in the way of stories like this.”
wontrevealmyidentity on December 25th, 2020 at 08:26 UTC »
Didn’t know he was making this.
Icarus was a great documentary. Looking forward to seeing this one, I’ll definitely go out of my way to watch it.
IAMSNORTFACED on December 25th, 2020 at 07:53 UTC »
Give it to the pirates, we'll distribute it
supremedalek925 on December 25th, 2020 at 06:56 UTC »
“They are asking: ‘What if I put this film out in Egypt? What happens if I release it in China, Russia, Pakistan, India?’ All these factors are coming into play, and it’s getting in the way of stories like this.”
It seems like now more than ever, nearly every media company is trying their hardest to appease these kinds of markets, ethics be damned.