The Dissident (2020)

(TubiTV Streaming, December 2021) Like anyone paying attention to world news, I knew the facts of the Jamal Khashoggi assassination before watching writer-director Bryan Fogel’s The Dissident — the affair was front-page news for a very long time, and the nature of the events — a state-sponsored assassination deliberately carried out in an embassy—was horrifying, as was the lackadaisical reaction of the United States to the whole sordid affair. But, as usual, there’s always a difference between living the revelations in real-time over weeks and seeing it all methodically laid out in less than two hours. If you’ve been lucky enough to remain unaware of the facts of the case, or managed to forgot them, part of The Dissident will feel like a horror film — the transcript of Khashoggi’s assassination and dismemberment is bad enough, but the jocular banter between the perpetrators, the methodical way it was executed, the luring of the victim looking for a marriage license, the suggestion that a videoconference link was open while this was being carried out in an embassy meeting room, the strong suggestion that the remains were cremated on-site in an oven otherwise used for cooking… ugh. But it doesn’t stop there. As The Dissident explains by way of context, this event is at the nexus of a vicious power play between Saudi crown princes, a state-sponsored intimidation of expatriate and influential foreign figures (including the rather amazing suggestion that the personal cell phone of Jeff Bezos —richest man in the world!—was infiltrated by Israeli-bought malware personally sent by a Saudi prince!), and deliberate cyber-warfare waged on social media. That last element actually explains why I ended up watching the film:  In a rather revelatory section of the documentary, it describes the power plays between the Saudi-employed “flies” attacking opponents of the regime and the dissident “bees” fighting back. (Any Canadian paying attention back in August 2018 saw the flies at work — After a Twitter spat between both countries, social media was suddenly overflowing with anti-Canadian sentiment, all repeating the same cheap shots.)  Well, no one will be surprised to find out that The Dissident itself became a skirmish between both groups. Go to IMDB, and you will find not just a suspiciously polarized distribution of votes between the ones and the tens ratings, but a far, far higher total of votes than is the norm for a documentary — a voting total high enough that it landed The Dissident on my list of films to watch. A fine example of the Streisand effect at work — thank you flies (?), thank you bees. Curiously, or predictably enough, The Dissident is nowhere to be found right now on the major streaming platform — you’ll have to head over to the lesser-known niche/educational platforms to find it. It’s worth the effort, but you’re not going to be comforted by the conclusion of it all. The murderers still run free, so think twice about accepting an invitation to a Saudi embassy.