What drew you to make The Dissident?
Bryan Fogel: As the story of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder was unfolding—between Jamal walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 and Saudi Arabia admitting on October 20 that he had been killed—I was following very closely. What was first being reported was that a Washington Postjournalist named Jamal Khashoggi had disappeared. Had it been reported that a Saudi journalist or Saudi writer had disappeared, nobody would have paid attention. But all of a sudden it was an American-based journalist entering the Saudi consulate and it was front-page news every day around the world. What struck me in everything I was reading was, “Who is this guy?” Jamal was very well known in his circles in the Middle East—you see that in The Dissident—but all of us in the West, we didn’t know who Jamal was or what he stood for. There were stories coming out that he was Muslim Brotherhood, he was tied to terrorists, he was an Al Qaeda sympathizer.
All of these stories were being planted in the media and as I dug more and more, I quickly realized that they were not true, that that is not who Jamal was. And in the days after his murder, the story of Omar Abdulaziz started emerging—the story of this young Saudi dissident in Canada who Jamal had been working with. The story starts coming out that Omar’s phone had been hacked by the Saudis. And of course you have the story of Hatice Cengiz, Jamal’s fiancé, who was waiting outside the consulate for Jamal while he went to get their marriage papers. By October 18 or 19, I had made the decision that I wanted to pursue the story. It checked all of the boxes for me as a filmmaker: It was a story with global impact and there was a story behind the story.
Did you have a clear sense from the outset of the film you wanted to make?
BF: It was clear that the story had all of the elements of a thriller. And it was clear that to make the film I wanted to make, there were three or four elements I would have to tie up. The first was Hatice, the emotional core of the story. Would Hatice trust me to work with her? And could I get not just access, but exclusive access? I knew she would be pursued by a hundred filmmakers and if other people were telling the story, I wouldn’t have a film of resonance. The second was Omar. Again, every news agency in the world was after him. I knew he had an incredible story, that it was the story behind the Khashoggi murder. The third was the Turkish government. Would they work with me and would they also work with me exclusively? And the last was The Washington Post. I spent about three months just building relationships.
How did you build trust?
BF: Had Icarus not been the film that it became and had I not won the Oscar, there is no way that I would have been able to get the access and trust that I did. In the case of Hatice, she researched me and saw the work of Icarus and how we had handled dealing with a whistleblower, how we handled really sensitive subject matter, how we worked to protect Grigory Rodchenkov. It gave her confidence. The same goes with the Turkish government, the same goes with Omar. I was approaching these people as someone who had shown in the past that he would work honestly, that he was not going to have a slant on the story, and that he was going to do everything he could to protect the sources and the truth behind the story.
On my first trip to Istanbul I got there right around Thanksgiving of 2018, about six weeks after Jamal had been murdered, and I spent five weeks there just building trust. During that time, Hatice and I met multiple times: had tea, had lunch, had dinner, and got to know each other. The same went with various people in the Turkish government. The way the Turks do business is all face-to-face, they don’t want to do business by phone, by email, it’s all by handshake, it’s all trust. It was the same with Omar, I went to Canada and spent a lot of time on a daily basis just building trust. It was several months before all of these entities decided that they were going to be safe in my hands.
As The Dissident unfolds, the audience learns one shocking thing after another. What was the most shocking thing you learned as you made this film?
BF: I think the most upsetting thing for me in going through the journey of Icarus was being confronted by the staggering amount of evidence and by the staggering amount of malfeasance. The global community, the people who could actually do something about it, were willing to turn a blind eye for money and sponsorship dollars and the integrity of the Olympics was just smoke and mirrors. And in the story of Jamal’s murder I was confronted with the same thing, with this confounding amount of evidence and not a single country willing to stand up to the money behind this monarchy. Human rights be damned, cold-blooded murder be damned, all of that be damned because the money is too big and we’re going to take the money over our integrity. Agnès Callamard, the United Nations’ special rapporteur, did an investigation and authored a report that shows Jamal’s murder is an open and closed case but the UN has not taken any action. The CIA report shows an open and closed case. The Turks gave the audio recordings of the murder to the French, the British, the Americans. At the end of the day, the money of the Saudi monarchy and the oil is going to override any and all justice or moral authority, and I think that is sadly the most shocking element of all.
How do you think we’ve come to that point, where money overrides everything
BF: I think it’s probably always been that way, but it hasn’t been as upfront as it is now with the current American administration. You see very clearly in the film that the United States—the one country that could take some real action because of its presence in the region and its military operations with the Saudis and the weapon sales—here we have a president, Trump, who on camera flat out goes, “I don’t care what they did, the money is more important than trying to punish the heinous crime.” I don’t believe that the average citizen in the world feels that way but I do believe that what is coming out of the Trump administration and arguably Britain, France, the United Nations, et cetera is mirroring that moral corruption.
I think the difference is that with social media and news 24/7, it’s not being as well hidden as it used to be. And look, this doesn’t appear to be just with the Saudis and the United States, this appears to be across the board as a global community, to accept these kind of practices and not take action. We’ve seen the same thing coming out of China with the Hong Kong protests and multiple corporations from the NBA to ESPN to Cathay Pacific Airlines essentially saying, “We don’t care what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs, we don’t care what they’re doing to Hong Kong, we aren’t going to risk our business interests.”
The Dissident looks at the pervasiveness of hacking in the world today and the near-absolute absence of secure privacy. If what The Dissident lays out is true—that we live in a world where morality is subverted to money, where human rights are expendable, and where there’s no privacy—isn’t that terrifying?
BF: It is terrifying. If you remember two, three, four years ago, there were a lot of cases where police organizations were desperately trying to get into people’s phones and they couldn’t. There were cases of child abductions and the police were arguing that they should have a right to get into somebody’s phone and Apple was coming back and saying, “No, because if we do this, where is that line? Who is allowed into phones?” Apple held a very tight line. What is so shocking to me about learning about the NSO Group and their spyware technology Pegasus is that they are selling this incredible hacking technology to governments of any shape or form as long as the governments pay for it. Essentially as long as you have the money to buy these tools, no one is safe. And here in the case of Saudi Arabia, these tools weren’t used to help fight crime, they were used to go after anyone trying to advocate for free speech.
We know that John Scott-Railtonfrom Citizen Lab, who you see in the film, uncovered the same story out of Mexico, where the Mexican government has paid tens of millions of dollars for Pegasus and used it to go after journalists who were fighting the drug cartels and corruption in the government. The same things happened in Ghana: The government used Pegasus to go after the opposition party, not only to subvert the election but to literally go and kill their opponents. It is scary indeed. And who knows how it is being used in the United States? There seems to be little to no oversight over it—as long as a government has acquired these tools, it doesn’t matter what that government is using the tools for. And when there are private companies like NSO Group that are willing to sell this technology to any government willing to pay for it, you have to believe that for enough money there’s all kinds of other people they’re willing to sell it to as well.
With ICARUS, there was a real issue of your own personal safety at one point. Making this film about the calculated murder of a journalist at the hands of his own government, how unsafe have you felt?
BF: I still feel unsafe. I think now that the movie is about to come out I feel the most unsafe that I have. But I made a decision with Icarus and then I did it again with The Dissident: If there aren’t people in the world who are willing to take on and tackle stories like this, then those stories remain shrouded. I think that my role as a filmmaker is to take a story that needs to be understood, a story that has real resonance and impact, and to take it someplace personal and empathetic so that people care. Russia was just banned from the Olympics for another four years and that wouldn't be happening had Icarus not come into the world. That film really shone a light on the truth. I think that only film can do that. Yes, the Khashoggi murder in and of itself is a horrendous story but what is the bigger story behind it? What is really going on in Saudi Arabia and what does that say about the world? Moral truths sometimes have to be bigger than yourself. I try not to think about my own safety too much because I’m making choices as a filmmaker to bring those stories forward.
Do you know whether you’ve been hacked?
BF: I’ve had some help from people that you see in the movie, who have looked at stuff. But the hacking technology is evolving so fast. Much like in Icarus with the drug tests, they keep figuring a way around the system. Every time that one hole is closed, another opens. In these spectacular operating systems that are iOS and Android, there are always going to be loopholes, there’s no ways to close those loopholes. And these guys at NSO Group have all the resources in the world to hire the best hackers in the world to figure out these loopholes. As long as the code keeps changing, there’s always a way in. Anti-virus software can only be as good as what a developer knows. What they don’t know is undetected.
Do you know if the Saudi government knows you’re working on this film?
BF: I’m guessing that they must know. But there’s been no official acknowledgment.
What would you like the impact of the film to be?
BF: I think it’s unrealistic to believe that the film is going to mean that Britain, France, China, the United States, et cetera, stop selling arms to the Saudis. I think it’s unrealistic to think that a film like this means that all of these companies and cyber-surveillance hacking tools are now under spectacular regulation and each one of their contracts comes under a microscope and Israel shuts down those companies that don’t comply. I think all of the outcomes that the majority of people would want to see are unrealistic because the world just doesn’t work that way. I do think there are a couple of things. First, knowledge is power. Maybe each time somebody fills up their tank of gas, they think, “My energy consumption is helping to fund an oppressive regime that is willing to cut people in half for simply wanting free speech. Maybe I should drive an electric car.”
Also, I do believe that if Trump is not reelected, there is very strong momentum on a bipartisan level to really take meaningful action against the Saudis. Both the US House and Senate passed resolutions saying that Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for Jamal’s murder and to block arms sales to the Saudis. On a bipartisan level this is something that the American people want and that the Trump Administration is blocking. The question is whether it comes too late—the more that the crime is in the rear view mirror, the harder it may become to enact sanctions. On a human rights level, Hatice is dedicated to continuing to seek justice for Jamal and I think the question there is, “What is justice?” I don’t have the definition but I think that her out there fighting and this film out there makes it that much harder for a crime like this to happen again. It makes it that much harder for Mohammed bin Salman to go and rendition someone like Omar.