The Dissident Review

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi was an event that shocked the world. The documentary The Dissident sets out to look at how the Saudi intelligence service was able to conduct the assassination and its ramifications.

The Dissident focuses on three main topics. The first looked at the background of Khashoggi and the Saudi state, the second was about the murder and the investigation, and third the impact Khashoggi’s murder had on the world.

The Dissident was Bryan Fogel’s follow up film to his Oscar winning documentary Icarus. Fogel is a man who isn’t afraid to take on powerful governments. Icarus was about the Russian doping program, and with The Dissident Fogel was taking on the Saudi government. Whilst Icarus got released on Netflix, The Dissident struggled to find a distributor because they feared the reprisals from the Saudi government. This goes to show the extent of influence and power the Saudi government has over the Western world.

The documentary looks at how much power Saudi Arabia has and how the government exercises it. The documentary states that the Saudi government had a cyber army to take down any online criticism, especially from Saudi citizens, and beef up support and attention for Saudi government schemes like Vision 2030. People in the documentary state that the Saudis have cyber operations that are comparable to Russia, China, and North Korea. The documentary also showed the Saudi intelligence services being able to hack into phones and use them as bugging devices.

The Saudi government also had more blunt methods like arresting family members of dissidents. Omar Abdulaziz, a dissident who had found asylum in Canada, told of a story where Saudi government representatives and had offered him a chance to renew his passport at the embassy. It sounded like Abdulaziz could have suffered a similar fate to Khashoggi, or at least that’s what the documentary implied.

The murder of Khashoggi was brazen and the Saudi government did it because they thought they could get away it. Saudi Arabia and its King did suffer a short-term backlash like world leaders boycotting the G20 conference hosted by the nation, and there was cross party support in America to stop arms sales which Trump vetoed. Fogel believes Khashoggi’s murderers will never face real justice and I sadly agree with him because the West’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is too important and Trump’s veto provided useful cover for politicians who wanted the credit for criticising Saudi Arabia without action needing to be taken.

The Dissident doesn’t reveal any new information about the murder and the Saudi covert operation, i.e. Khashoggi was brutally murdered and dismembered and a Saudi operative dressed up in Khashoggi’s clothes walked around Istanbul. Where the documentary does success is letting the audience know the horror of the murder. There was no graphic violence but there was a foreboding sense due to the footage taken by the Turkish police, the testimony from the investigating officers, and a recording from the consulate. The Saudis followed the Russian playbook when they were discovered: deny, discredit, and deflect.

The documentary does have a personal dimension. Many of the people interviewed knew Khashoggi, including Abdulaziz who convinced Khashoggi to cross the line from reformer to dissident. The most personal interviewee was Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancé.

Fogel aimed to be as comprehensive as possible. This was especially true with the first half as the documentary looked at the life and work of Khashoggi and how the Saudi state functions. He was trying to give the documentary context, but this had a major drawback: it made The Dissident seem scattershot. The filmmakers were trying to cover too much which made the first half of the documentary difficult to engage with. When the documentary turned into a real-life spy thriller it became more focused and interesting.

The Dissident tells an important real-life story that highlights the reach of the Saudi government and why Khashoggi’s murder was important.