"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.”
“What I observed was that the desire for corporate profits have left the integrity of America’s film culture weakened,” said Thor Halvorssen, the founder and chief executive of the nonprofit Human Rights Foundation (HRF), who financed the film and served as a producer.
Good on the New York Times for covering this story:
I *highly* recommend you watch The Dissident. You won't find this film on Netflix or Amazon, but it is available via Video On Demand.
Meanwhile, compare and contrast Netflix's response to catering their content (read: censoring) for the Saudi market vs. their social media feed post-George Floyd."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/business/media/dissident-jamal-khashoggi-netflix-amazon.html
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.”
“What I observed was that the desire for corporate profits have left the integrity of America’s film culture weakened,” said Thor Halvorssen, the founder and chief executive of the nonprofit Human Rights Foundation (HRF), who financed the film and served as a producer.
Good on the New York Times for covering this story:
I *highly* recommend you watch The Dissident. You won't find this film on Netflix or Amazon, but it is available via Video On Demand.
Meanwhile, compare and contrast Netflix's response to catering their content (read: censoring) for the Saudi market vs. their social media feed post-George Floyd."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/business/media/dissident-jamal-khashoggi-netflix-amazon.html