“I said to Hatice from the outset, ‘look, you know, I’m in this for the long haul,” says Fogel. Fogel’s commitment to the cause has not wavered. She’s been searching for answers-and fielding death threats-ever since.

Cengiz, a Turkish scholar and activist, was waiting for Khashoggi outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul when he was murdered inside, having entered to retrieve marital paperwork for the couple. Those elements included working closely alongside such subjects as Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi dissident video blogger hiding in exile in Montreal and whose story functions as a parallel narrative to Khashoggi’s, and Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. “And I try not to focus on the elements that are out of my control.” As a filmmaker, I like to take on challenging subject matter,” says Fogel, whose Oscar-winning documentary “Icarus” blew the whistle on Russia’s doping scandal, resulting in the nation’s four-year (later reduced to two-year) ban from the Olympics. “I was, of course, aware of the danger, but what felt more important to me was the story, and the characters involved, and that inspired me. Armed with exclusive access to Turkish criminal files, he embarked on a daring quest to unveil all facts in the case and hold accountable the perpetrators behind Khashoggi’s gruesome murder. Fogel, a cinematic troubadour in the dogged pursuit of truth, was undeterred. (To date, the US has leveraged zero sanctions against Saudi Arabia, nor meted out any punitive measures.) But there was danger lurking around every corner of this high-octane thriller, one that sent a shiver of terror down the spines of not only career journalists, but human rights activists and political dissidents globalwide.

There was the matter of Khashoggi’s killing-a brutal one, his body sawed into parts-at the hands of a Saudi murder squad, a death that US intelligence agencies have determined with a high degree of certainty was ordered by the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman. When Bryan Fogel set out to make “ The Dissident,” his intrepid and arresting exposé on the assassination of Saudi Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, he knew there were myriad security risks involved.

Layers of fear tropes