Transcribe your podcast
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Khashoggi entered the consulate on October 2nd, two weeks later, I think it was the 16th, Saudi Arabia finally admitted that he had, in fact, died inside that consulate. And I'm reading this story as I think many in the world were began following this story in those two weeks. And, you know, each day it was another shocking allegation and that he had been dismembered and that the body was nowhere to be found and that they won't let him in the consulate.

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And following that story in those two weeks, in my mind, I was going here was a story of a journalist. And not only that, he's a Washington Post journalist, only fighting for free speech and he's advocating for human rights and he disagrees with his authoritarian government. And he's had essentially a war of words with the crown prince and now he's been murdered. Maybe this is the next film I want to make. Human rights and freedom of speech isn't just in danger and being suppressed.

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In places like Saudi Arabia, it's here in the United States. That's Brian Fogel and this is the patrol podcast. The Rich Roll podcast. Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. So a couple of years ago, I hosted cyclist and filmmaker Brian Fogel on the show to talk about Icarus, his extraordinary exposé of Russia's elaborate state sponsored Olympic doping program. And that's a film that would land him an Oscar for best documentary in twenty seventeen. Well, Brian is back.

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He's got an incendiary follow up. It's called the dissident. And it's this candid portrait of Saudi Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the rather bone chilling events surrounding his murder that plays as a film, more like an international thriller than a documentary. It's definitely another Oscar contending mandatory must watch. And this conversation is going to rock you. But first, how are those New Year's resolutions coming along? Day seven here of twenty twenty one. If honing your nutrition, losing weight or finally going fully plan forward is a goal of yours first.

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OK, Brian Fogel, of course, this conversation is organized around his latest work, The Dissident, which premiered in limited theaters on December 25 and is available VOD on most streaming platforms beginning January 8th, and which, I promise you, is going to rock your world behind the story of Jamal Khashoggi himself and this trajectory that he goes on from reformist journalist, ultimately dissident.

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This is also a discussion about free speech and the role of social media in both promoting and squelching it.

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It's about the growing surveillance state tech intrusions on privacy, cyber warfare, Mohammed bin Salman's consolidation of power in Saudi Arabia and the complexity of international relations with the kingdom.

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It's also about how that realpolitik trickles down to Hollywood and how the dissident, despite being the talk of the town at last year's Sundance, proved almost too fraught for just about every film distribution company and very nearly never saw the light of day. I think it's fair to say that Brian is one of the most important documentary filmmakers of our time. Please check out our first conversation, Episode three twenty eight if you missed it. And it was an honor to once again sit down with him.

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And I suspect this conversation is going to leave you with more than a few important things to ponder. So here we go. This is me and Brian Fogle.

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It's been a couple of years. The last time I saw you was on the bike. It's good to be back in the same room with you. And a lot has happened in the last couple of years in your life.

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It's been a crazy trajectory for you. Yeah, it's been it's been an interesting few years, and that's for sure.

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What was it like when you won the Oscar and you're up on that stage? I mean, that has to be one of the most surreal experiences you can imagine.

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It was March of twenty eighteen and it was surreal. And what was interesting is leading leading up to that, the the months up to it. Icarus released on Netflix in August of twenty seventeen and the Academy Awards was, you know, eight months later or seven months later and Netflix had, you know, it put a lot of energy behind essentially this award campaign. And I had never went through anything like this before. And so it was seven months of every day of my life.

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You're waking up and here's your schedule for the day, right? Here's your press. Here's where you're going. Here's your screenings. Here's where you're going, you know, and it was intense.

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And so, you know, the lead up into that was months and months of this, you know, kind of campaign.

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But from the time we get nominated to actually going to the Academy Awards and there I'm there, sitting there.

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I mean, it felt like there was an elephant on me. Like I wasn't at that point having fun because it just it was amazing.

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And at the same time, the pressure, because it was just there was so much feeling for me at stake and a Netflix and my partners and everything had put so much into it. And so we were all like they are kind of like pins and needles.

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And luckily they called the award for best documentary.

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I think it was like the third or fourth award of those early in the night, which was really, really good because like, you know, you is sitting there and, you know, they called Icarus. And I just remember, like, at that moment, I essentially had left my body. I mean, it was just, you know, do you walk it up on the stage there? And, you know, there's, you know, this person, that person, everybody in the entertainment, that front row just looking up at you.

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You ever admired that?

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You're sitting there going like, wow, I'm I'm on stage at the Academy Awards with Oscar, my head.

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And they handed me that Oscar.

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And it's about how many pounds. It's it's like 12, 13 pounds or I mean, it's it's heavy.

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I was like, oh, it's like, you know, and and it was completely surreal.

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And an actor won the statue.

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You know, you're led into this labyrinth underneath the Kodak Theatre and you come out of the labyrinth about an hour later because they walk you through all these, like, stations of photos and. Right. And then a booth like what was it like to win the Oscar and all these, you know, kind of surreal things. And you emerge about an hour later. And as I kind of emerge out of the cavern about an hour later, right where the backstage is, is, you remember, is it Joel or Ethan Coen who's married to Frances McDormand?

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I think it's Joel. Joel.

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So Joel is there and France has won the Academy Award that night for Best Actress.

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And and he goes to me. Enjoy Earth. There he goes, yeah, he's like he's like because, you know, the odds are there's never going to happen again.

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Yes. And he tells me there's this crazy, funny story about Sylvester Stallone that I won't repeat.

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I just want I'm like, this is so surreal. I just want an Academy Award. There's I really should remember if it's Joel or Ethan Coen talking to me like they're my favorite filmmakers of all time, you know?

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And it was it was quite a night. It's pretty cool. And my parents were there, too. Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

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The campaigning that goes into the Oscar season is bananas is so much at stake.

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For these companies, it is bananas and what's interesting is in covid now, you know, it's so radically different, right, because you can't press the flesh and go to all these launches and all that kind of stuff, all these screenings where, you know, with Ikarus you had I don't even know, you know, 30, 40 screenings were small screenings and you're meeting people.

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And and it was wonderful because I got to meet so many people, so many people I looked up to were filmmakers or documentarians or you name it.

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And so covid is really, really change that. But it was really intense because you're you're also there's like a playbook. You've got your talking points and you've got your you know, like the dos and don'ts and what you're going to say and what you shouldn't say and and how to answer a question.

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And everything was so like it was it was intense. Yeah, it was intense. And in the process I was doing, you know, then kind of like, you know, go do an interview. And then after the interview, it was like, OK, that was really good. But, you know, maybe change the next time you answered the question. Do this, you know.

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Well, I could you know, thinking back to when you did the podcast, I mean, you're definitely lighter in your shoes today than you were on that day. There was a you know, we had just met, so we didn't know each other really. But there was a there was a little bit more of a seriousness and maybe a sense that you were shouldering that kind of heavy responsibility at the time.

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Yeah, I, I just I was it was interesting. I remember going through that so well because I was enjoying it at the same time. I actually was I was so stressed out because each one of these events, you do these events and it was like, OK, was that OK?

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And then I'd like replay it in my mind and go like that. I don't answer a question the right way or did I say something that was what is going to call you and chew you out for?

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Listen, if you're going on podcasts and you're talking for a couple hours, you know, it's I mean, the the entire lead up to the Oscars and just that whole season, I mean, it was so intense and we had been nominated for a BAFTA.

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And so I'd been at the BAFTA like two weeks before that and we didn't win. And so you come out the BAFTA and you're feeling, you know, like completely defeated. Right. But you've got the Oscar nomination and and everybody was going, well, don't don't worry about that.

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And the you know, the yes. You still got the Oscars.

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And it was an incredible experience. But I can't tell you that I was, like, having fun during that period.

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And part of it really had to do with what Ikarus was about.

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And that here as this whole awards season is going and GriGri which of whistleblower to this day is living in hiding in protective custody, is isolated. And so it was what was weighing on me also was that, OK, here I am having these experiences and being celebrated. And the guy who. Without him out of impossible, you yeah, this wouldn't have been possible without his evidence, without that story, none of this would be happening is basically living in isolation in an underground undisclosed location, under security, under the threat of his life.

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And, you know, here I am on this completely different trajectory now. And and that and that really weighed on me. Still weighs on me. Yeah.

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I mean, my first question, I mean, we're here to talk about the dissident, your new your new film. But we can't get into that without hearing a little bit about how Gregory is doing. Like, are you in communication with him? Like, what's the latest? I know you put this book out recently.

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He put his book out, which is his memoir of, you know, is his life. And actually, I can say this now because by the time you hear this, it'll be known it just won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, which is a very prestigious prize in the U.K. So he just won the basically British Sports Book of the Year award for the four for the book. And yet the book still doesn't have a U.S. publisher, which is bizarre.

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Yeah, I noticed that he self published it. No, it was published by Penguin Random House in the U.K. and then we couldn't get a U.S. deal for it. I was involved just as no financial stake, nothing just trying to to help facilitate. But the book's pretty amazing. And and so that, you know, came out a couple of months ago. But I'm not able to. You know, communicate directly with him. I don't I don't have his phone number, I don't know where he lives.

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I don't want to know where he lives. But we've been able to stay in touch through his lawyers and, you know, he's doing OK. But he hasn't seen his family since. Since he escaped Russia, which was in November of 2015. He went into protective custody in July of 2016. So we're, you know, four years in four and a half years end of essentially this guy living in isolation, in protection. And what's interesting is that the story is continue to evolve.

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He went across, released in August. Twenty seventeen. Russia was still going to the Olympics five months later, basically because of what that film's impact had been on the world at that point and and the global distribution that that Netflix has the Olympics, the IOC essentially had to do something. So even though at that point the story had been in the press and the media, it you know, it's very different. OK, you see something on CNN or read something in The New York Times versus now you're emotionally connecting to a character and you're seeing this in a film and you're realizing the extent of this fraud and kind of how bad it really was.

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The IOC, you know, decides to ban Russia from the Pyeongchang Olympic Games in twenty eighteen and in the decision of the ban, even though the ban was largely ceremonial because Russia was then able to still compete, but not under their own flag. And the athletes were competing as Olympic athletes from Russia. They cited Ikarus and the reason decision. Wow.

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And so that was, you know, the Olympics, I think were February twenty eighteen.

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And then at the time there was the still is WADA. The World Anti-Doping Agency had put together this roadmap, which was OK. Here's the three things that Russia needs to do to get reinstated into world sport. And one of them was that they were supposed to provide the limbs data, which is the laboratory management system, data of everything they had been up to over the past, like, you know, decade kind of thing, like, OK, we know you cheated, but you guys got to come clean and you need to provide this data because they believe that, you know, that what was in this database was a ton of other doping violations and frauds, that the urine swapping and the opening, the bottles and all the other kind of stuff.

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And Rocancourt Gregory had said, yeah, this is you know, there are tons and tons of cases in here that, you know, that I entered into the system is negative, that were actually positive. Right. And here's what we did. So that was the first thing they had to turn turn over. The second thing for Russia's reinstatement was that they were going to accept the Richard McLaren report, which was after we brought the story public to The New York Times in May of twenty sixteen.

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Richard McLaren, the investigator who was brought in by the World Anti-Doping Agency to investigate those allegations, authors this report over the next year.

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And the report, you know, basically, you know, goes down a rabbit hole of of insanity, of of how big this fraud was. And it was all backed up through scientific data and researchers and forensic evidence, etc., and that Russia had to accept the McLaren report as fact. Right. And the third thing was that there was going to be like a massive reform to the anti-doping system and that there'd be all this oversight and all this stuff.

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Right. So they had set this as the three things that Russia had to do to get back in.

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And here we are basically two years later, it's now actually like the beginning of this year, right. And. Russia still hadn't accepted the McLaren report, still hadn't returned over the Limbs data, but WADA reinstates them into competition, basically just going back on the on their own, you know, word that this had to happen. The point of this story is that they finally turn over this Lims data. And I don't want to mess up a date, but this is sometime around a year ago, they finally turned over the limbs data.

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And in turning over the database, Russia had went in before they turned it over to water and had manipulated the entire database. But Warta already had the real database that Chekhov had turned over to them of what it was supposed to be. Right, right. And now the one that rushes, turns over is basically been completely manipulated to erase all these positives, to erase Cobb's evidence. But not only that, they had made notes into the database pretending to be Gregory writing these notes to basically blame the entire scandal again on Rocancourt, that this was all a big conspiracy, that Richard covid acted as a sole practitioner, KGB, FSB had nothing to do with this.

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The state wasn't involved.

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And water goes, what is this guy's? Are you kidding me?

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And so they basically rebrand Russia for another four years.

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And this is where it stands right now today. That's the current state. Russia is still suspended from international competition.

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Had the Olympics happened this last summer in twenty twenty, the recommendation was WADA was going to be banned from the or Russia was going to be banned from the Summer Olympic Games. We don't know if that was going to happen because they were fighting that in the Court of Arbitration for Sport. That was unresolved and the IOC had made the decision. So you know where this stands right now? You know, here we are, you know, essentially four years on, but two years on from the Winter Games as Russia's continued to deny their.

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Rebrand bad again.

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As of right now, they're not going to the summer games if they were to happen in twenty twenty one American QOF is still not only is he persona non grata, if you pull all the Russian media, I mean, this guy is essentially the arch enemy of arch enemies, right. In the overall history of the Russian Federation.

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I mean, and as long as Putin's in power, that will remain to be the case.

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I mean, we've heard reports from, you know, through his attorneys from CIA intelligence is that he is either number one or number two on Russia's kill list. About a year ago, if you remember, there were nine Russian agents that were kicked out of the country that actually Trump administration had discovered these nine basically secret agents that were working in the country. And they kicked him out. They were supposed to be I'm going to botched this story, but apparently they were Russian diplomats or whatever.

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But then the State Department determined they were spies.

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Right. So they were actually working on behalf of the FSB to come and and sort of root out Rod Chanko here in the States.

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Apparently, three of those agents of these nine that were expelled from the United States were here hunting rich uncle.

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And there's been reports on Beling Cat, which is his investigative circle of journalists, that even when he was supposed to appear, the Russia thought that he was going to appear at these hearings in Lausanne, Switzerland, which, of course, you know, he appeared via like Skype or Zoom. But they thought that he was going to be there in person. And there were agents that were in Luise on essentially waiting for him. There's all sorts of, you know, evidence that's been uncovered in the last few years of, you know, they're they're hunting this guy that's so dark.

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And, you know, you look at Navalny, the guy who was poisoned in Germany or whatever, that was five, six months ago with Nova Chalke and and Skirball, you know, which was March of twenty eighteen in the U.K. the you know, that poisoned him and his daughter Litvinenko. And then all these other mysterious murders and some that have been looked at as hangings and and suicides and this, that and the other, it is clear that, you know, Russia doesn't forget.

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Right. Wow.

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So how has this impacted you personally? Like, are you on the receiving end of some of these threats, veiled or otherwise?

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I have gratefully, I've I've never received a threat, um, and I've never received an email threat or a text message threat or social media threat. And, you know, the way that I've always looked at it myself is that, you know, why would you shoot the messenger?

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And I think, you know, Russia and you you even hear Putin when they asked him about the the the Skripal poisonings.

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And you can go look at interviews and they go, did you do this? And he goes, no, I didn't do this. But treason is the highest crime and it should be punished.

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And so, yeah, you know, basically I didn't do this, but yeah.

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You know, if somebody did do this, this was warranted because treason is the highest crime.

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And I think, you know, and I, I can't speak for how, you know, Russia. But if you look like even the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 or Skripal.

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Right. It was these were acts of treason. And Gregory is viewed as a traitor, a defector.

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You know, and I would imagine that even Garry Kasparov is on that list, you know, as as a defector.

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And and the guy who was the pride of Russia, who is now, you know, a very, very public in the past several years, you know, against Putin.

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But hopefully, you know, I'm OK. And I needless to say, I'm not planning a trip to Moscow any time soon.

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Yeah, and now probably not. Not Saudi Arabia.

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Yeah, definitely not Saudi Arabia. Definitely not. Yeah. I mean, it's a perfect Segway into the new film because that's essentially, you know, an overlapping narrative with what you explore in the in in the murder of Khashoggi, this idea of. You know, power unchecked, where whether it's Putin or mobs, they kind of want you to know it's them without saying it's them, because they want to put the message out that they mean business. But perhaps there's also an under appreciation for the kind of global response and reaction to these events where there's a growing intolerance for this kind of thing.

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Like, I suspect that NB's didn't anticipate the level of outrage that he kind of invited upon himself as a result of all of this.

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Well, I don't think he expected that there was going to be a bug, a listening device in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Right. That was going to blow the roof beyond a shadow of a doubt.

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I mean, just flat out what had happened in that consulate.

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So I don't I don't think the Kosugi murder was just horrifying.

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But I don't think that MB's when you go into the details of a case, it was so stupidly planned and it was so brazen and outrageous, but. Obviously, they they couldn't have imagined that there was a listening device in the consulate in the room that they decided to murder him in, and that's a whole story about that, right?

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I mean, that was a big question. And before we get too deep into this, we should probably just synopsize the film a little bit for people that aren't familiar.

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But what wasn't completely clear is how that recording transpired. Like who who set that bug? How did that transcript, you know, get compiled?

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Like who who hit record on what device and for what purpose basically records the entire process of murdering this journalist?

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Well, what did what had happened, as I learned and in making the decision, is they had decided, the Saudis, that they wanted to rendition Jamal Khashoggi back to the kingdom. He was he was writing in The Washington Post, you know, not defending Trump and the Saudi regime. Trump was a huge ally. So he was speaking out against US Saudi relations. And Trump, he was working with a Saudi dissident in Canada, basically fighting Saudi Arabia's control of Twitter, which is all part of the film.

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And he had come out, you know, as speaking publicly that he didn't agree with a lot of parts of Mohammed bin Salman's vision. Twenty thirty, which is his concept of how to reform the kingdom. But everything that Jamal was writing about, if you go back and read his Washington Post writings or even read books that he had published in Arabic, he was a moderate. You couldn't even consider him a liberal, right?

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I mean, this is the reformist from inside the system. Yeah.

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This was a a moderate reformist who loved his country, who had no problem with the monarchy. He just believed because here was a guy who had been educated in the United States, he'd been coming to the US and to the U.K. his whole life, you know, most of the time working for the Saudi royal family as somebody who was either, you know, not a diplomat, but a, you know, a liaison. He spoke fluent English or as a journalist for the kingdom, writing about what was going on.

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And so this was a guy who really was entrenched in that system and the family. And so his defection from the kingdom was an insider who really knew what was going on there, knew these people. But he was portrayed all of a sudden in Western media as Muslim Brotherhood, as a terrorist sympathizer, as a guy who knew bin Laden and al Qaeda and all this stuff.

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And this was not true. He was a moderate who loved his country, and what he was writing about wasn't like, you know, down with Saudi Arabia and the US must be overthrown, you know, the royalty has no place. The monarchy must abdicate the throne. None of that was going on. This was a guy who was going, I love my country.

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We have a young prince who I believe is starting to lead the country down the wrong path. He's talking about reforms. He's talking about, OK, women can be able to drive and there isn't going to be this the guardian system where women have to check in with any man in the household as 18 years or older to get permission to leave the house and all these things that Mohammed bin Salman was talking about changing in the kingdom. And at the same time, he's completely crushing opinions.

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He's crushing anybody who has anything critiquing of him. You know, just anybody who dares speaks anything other than this guy is essentially the chosen, perfect, you know, monarch of all time. And so what Jamal was really writing about was, was, hey, we can do better, we can be better, and you can be a monarch and also be kind. You can be a monarch and be compassionate. You can be, you know, a king or a prince and inspire your people rather than repress them.

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And that was the core of what he was doing.

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And that dissent led to a place where had he stayed in Saudi Arabia, he surely would have been jailed. And in leaving, he became hunted. And then ultimately the decision was, you know, to to murder him.

[00:37:20]

Right. So historically, the relationship between the monarchy and the press in Saudi Arabia is kind of hagiographic. Right. Like your job is to basically speak kindly of what's happening in the government for the most part. Exactly.

[00:37:36]

He was able to still advocate for some level of reform within that construct and still covid favor with those in power. He kind of knew where that line was and how much he could push without transgressing it.

[00:37:52]

But my sense is that over time, beginning with Arab Spring and kind of everything that happened after that, he started to get a little bit more active, pushing the buttons a little bit more, a little bit more, seeing where that line was.

[00:38:06]

And at one point he crosses it, perhaps even unbeknownst to him. And there's this edict that comes down from the monarchy where they kind of disavow themselves of him. Right. And then he realizes like basically he's fucked and he, like, catches a flight out of out of the kingdom like that night without telling anyone. He could go back at some point, but.

[00:38:29]

Yes, well, no, he never did. He you know, and you see in the film, we show some old clips of him and you see, you know, him speaking in English and appearing on, you know, on Western media, speaking in English. And so here is this guy who had spent his whole life, you know, back and forth between the West and Saudi Arabia. But, you know, he's in the kingdom and he starts essentially speaking out, not in any sort of like, aggressive way, but basically tweeting or writing, hey, you know, I don't agree with this or maybe this can be different.

[00:39:15]

And and this guy was was listened to. He had one point seventy five million followers on Twitter, which, you know, is a big number, especially in Saudi Arabia. And so he was very respected. So unlike, you know, let's say a you know, a young up and comer of this at the other. This was now a very respected journalist coming out with his thoughts or opinions and somebody who knew the inside workings. And so Mohammed bin Salman had kind of put together this whole, I guess, army, as you'd call it, of people to basically see to it that that, you know, there were no free speech or freedom of opinion in the kingdom.

[00:40:01]

And Saud al-Qahtani, who was one of the royal advisers, basically apparently comes up with this plan of how they are going to, you know, see to it, you know, that that there is no free speech in the kingdom. And Saud reaches out to Jamal and tells them, don't write, don't tweet, don't talk. You're to remain silent. And and basically, if you don't, we're going to we're going to come and arrest you. Right.

[00:40:35]

And there's threats being made. And Jamal essentially makes a decision that he has to leave. He can't remain silent. And and in this decision we get into in the film. But, you know, he was he was married. He had children. His kids were living in the United States at the time. I didn't know.

[00:41:00]

And two of the kids were in the U.S. One of the kids was in was in Saudi, was my understanding. And, you know, and he was happily married. And he makes this decision that he has to leave and he has to leave.

[00:41:19]

I think for two reasons, as I understand it, and his friends, who you know, who I got to know in the making of the film tell me is that, you know, the idea that that he would sit there and be a lame duck and be silent and and that his whole life was as a writer, was as a journalist was as a you know, that now he was his voice was silenced, was enough that was so compelling that that that he felt that it was better to to leave the country than to stay with his family and be silenced.

[00:41:57]

And of course, I think, you know, his family probably, you know, was not thrilled with that decision.

[00:42:04]

And, you know, after he leaves, he comes to Washington, he gets a job being a global opinions writer for The Washington Post. And there's a story and I certainly can't validate the truth of it because, you know, for for reasons.

[00:42:24]

But apparently the the Saudis come to to his family, to his wife. And tell her that she has to divorce Jamal because only a husband grant a divorce from his wife in the kingdom, women, women are not allowed to divorce. A man has to grant a woman the right to divorce. And and apparently they they brought her in and, you know, interrogated her and whatever and said, you're going to call your husband and tell him that he has to grant you a divorce.

[00:43:00]

And and he did. And he did because, you know, for her own good so that they would leave the family alone. And so he now was in Washington and, you know, he was essentially isolated. Yeah. And that began the rebuilding of his life. It began essentially his ultimately finding of Hadija Jeni's, the girl, that woman that he decided that he was going to remarry and that led to him going into the consulate in Istanbul where he was murdered because he had went there to seek marriage papers to prove that he was no longer married so that he can marry Hadija.

[00:43:47]

It's devastating the idea that he would leave his entire family behind, knowing he would never see them again.

[00:43:54]

Well, the kids were in Virginia and Washington, two of them at the time. They're now back in Saudi Arabia. They decided in the aftermath of his murders that basically they had two choices, as I best understand it, choice. One was fight for justice for their father and. You know, the family would basically never be able to travel, right, be arrested, have their, you know, be ruined, right.

[00:44:25]

Because how are you going to take on this kingdom and you have so many cousins and relatives and aunts and uncles.

[00:44:34]

I mean, you know, so so it was like, OK, either we're going to go fight for our father's death or we're going to socially accept a payout. There's stories that the payout was in the tens of millions of dollars and remain silent and move on with our lives.

[00:44:53]

And the family decided to go that route because it wasn't just about the kids.

[00:45:00]

It was our aunts, uncles, our sisters, our brothers, our cousins that, you know, whatever war we rage or fight in trying to fight for justice for our father is putting every member of our family in danger. So I think ultimately the decision was made is, OK, we'll go back to Saudi, will shut up.

[00:45:22]

We'll move past this and we'll take the money.

[00:45:28]

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All right, back to the show. In the structure of the film, it's very interesting the way you kind of set this up.

[00:48:50]

You have these two. Protagonists that are essentially on a collision course with each other. You've got Khashoggi and all the events that led ultimately to his murder. But in parallel with that, there's this other guy, Omar, who's left the kingdom and is living. In in Montreal and ultimately these two crossed paths on this kind of trajectory that that Khashoggi is on from reformist journalists to becoming, you know, essentially a full blown dissident.

[00:49:26]

So talk a little bit about how you structured the film, because it really does. I mean, I haven't even said this yet, but it's like the film is extraordinary. You did an unbelievable job. It's so compelling. And it plays very much like a narrative thriller. Like on some level it's more like a Bourne movie than a documentary like the score. All of the sound design, like every element of it, is keeping you on pins and needles the whole time.

[00:49:52]

And there's like a gestalt, like a tempo to the movie that really is is very hyper engaging and unusual for a documentary.

[00:49:59]

Well, thank you. That's certainly how we and myself and my creative partners wanted the film to feel sound. Look structured is much like Icarus. But in this sort of heightened level, I looked at this story and said, OK. It's a thriller. It's all true, but this is a thriller, the the murder. The story of why he's murdered, how he's murdered. All the forces at play, the characters, this is. Like a film and and so there was a very intentional construction cinematically and how we structured the film pace the film, put the film together and use these cinematic techniques that you would see in an enemy of a state or in those Bourne films or, you know, you name the kind of spy thriller movie that were intentionally employed in the construction of this film while remaining true to being a documentary.

[00:51:21]

I mean, everything in the film we shot everything of the film was in fact everything that the film was researched and archived and backed by evidence. But structurally, my feeling as as a filmmaker and my, you know, collaborators, as I think if you can engage an audience, you know, visually, you know, through sound, music, motion graphics effects, all these kind of devices that when you're watching like a big thriller, get you on the edge of your seat going, what's going to happen next?

[00:51:56]

And you can do that. And especially in the case of this story, that hopefully the the come away from from watching the dissident isn't just that you're on the edge of your seat and you're having that kind of cinematic thriller esque experience, but that it also leads to a call to action because you're emotionally impacted because you didn't just watch a piece of news, you went on a journey. And that journey becomes very emotional, hopefully, in watching the film.

[00:52:29]

And that leads what my intention would be and is that there's a call to action behind it, that you come out of the film and you fall in love with the DGA. Jeni's his fiancee. You care about Omar Abdel Aziz and that his brothers are still jailed in Saudi, you know, with no charges, and his friends are jailed in Saudi for two years without charges. And this guy is lives in isolation, basically fighting, you know, the kingdom for freedom of speech.

[00:53:00]

You you know, you understand the truth behind this and want to do something about it. As you see, you know, the members of the G20 and the Trump administration essentially bury their head in the sand and condone this murder all for all for money. And so hopefully in the construction of the film being a thriller, that it also leads to a greater emotional response.

[00:53:30]

And that was kind of the intention.

[00:53:32]

Yeah, I mean, I knew this story. I had read some of his pieces in in The Washington Post. I had a familiarity with kind of the the broader brushstrokes of what had transpired.

[00:53:45]

What I was not aware of was one focus of the film being on on the extent of the surveillance state and how, you know, the Pegasus malware and the hacking of the phones and how all of that, like, played into how of that how this whole thing unfolded.

[00:54:03]

You know, it was, you know, to back up. Khashoggi entered the consulate on October 2nd, basically two weeks later, I think it was the 16th, Saudi Arabia finally admitted that he had, in fact, died inside that consulate.

[00:54:26]

And in the film was kind of the whole story of how that kind of unfolds and the pressure that Turkey put on Saudi Arabia to get them to ultimately confess because they had the audio. And I had been following this story essentially from October 3rd. You know, Washington Post journalist vanishes inside of, you know, Saudi consulate in Istanbul. And I'm reading this story as I think many in the world began following this story in those two weeks. And, you know, each day it was another shocking allegation and that he had been dismembered and that the body was nowhere to be found and that they won't let him in the consulate.

[00:55:20]

And the met with a freelancer and crazier excuses on behalf of the kingdom about what had happened.

[00:55:26]

Yeah, and and I'm reading this. And I remember because it was I'm pretty sure it was October 16th, 17th, and I was in I was in Rome at the time, I had been invited to speak for the Rome Film Festival. And I was with my fiancee and I had been following this story. And as I started following that story in those two weeks, in my mind, I was going, maybe this is the next film I want to make.

[00:56:02]

This seems to have all these ingredients, because I had been looking at that point for about a year. For what that next story I wanted to take on what that next documentary I wanted to make was. And I felt kind of a lot of pressure and burden coming out of Ikarus that I wasn't going to go and direct a Disney film. I couldn't go, you know, whatever make the Stevie Wonder documentary or whatever that was, you know, like.

[00:56:30]

Yeah, like I was going to have to at least in my mind, I wanted to see to it that I was taking on something that was. Human rights, freedom of press freedom. Journalism, protecting a whistleblower, authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, all these kind of themes that that is as a storyteller, I wanted to be able to continue in in that path. And here was a story of a journalist. And not only that, he's a Washington Post journalist own.

[00:57:04]

He's fighting for free speech and he's advocating for human rights and he disagrees with his authoritarian government. And he's had essentially a war of words with, you know, with the crown prince and now he's been murdered. Mm hmm. And and I said, OK. This could be the one and the question was, is can I essentially get access to this story to be able to tell it in a manner that isn't going to be something that's archival?

[00:57:38]

And there were three things that really hinged on it, which was one, there was the story of his fiancee emerging of a girl, you know, a teacher who was waiting for him outside the consulate. And I said, oh, wow, this is clearly the emotional core of what this story is. I mean, the concept I mean, which is unfathomable to me. It's unfathomable to anybody listening to this that that the person that you love, that you believe you're going to marry and spend your life with.

[00:58:14]

Walks into a consulate, an embassy, you know, to be murdered horrifically and that you're never going to see them again, and then at the same time become, in this case, the center of a global media storm. And so all of a sudden, you become famous and famous around the world to the point where you can't really even leave your house, not because of something you did that you're proud of, but because the person that you loved has met this horrific fate.

[00:58:51]

And that, to me, was the first element that if I could get a to work with me exclusively and share her story, the love story. That would be a chance of being able to really tell the story, the second part of this was Omar Abdulazeez in Canada. And in the days following, because Shoji's murder and the admission that Saudi Arabia, you know, that he had died inside that consulate, there's a story coming forward in The New York Times of this young Saudi dissident who was living in Montreal.

[00:59:28]

And while Abdulazeez and he was saying, I know why Jamal was killed. In fact, I was hacked by Israeli cyber surveillance software called Pegasus, owned by the NSA corporation, and that Saudi Arabia had hacked my phone using this software, Pegasus, Jamal was hacked to and because my phone had been hacked, they knew that Jamal Khashoggi and I had been working on a project to basically take over the narrative back onto Twitter, as you'll see in the film.

[01:00:09]

And if you read about this, Saudi Arabia basically was manipulating and still to this day manipulating Twitter, which was the only platform in the kingdom where people could have freedom of speech and opinion because Twitter is a decentralized platform. And if you create like different various Twitter accounts and you can create an account under fake name or whatever you want right there, you can voice expression. And this was how the Arab Spring came to pass also.

[01:00:37]

And a big argument for why anonymity on Twitter is something to be protected. So these dissident voices can be heard. Exactly. And 80 percent. Sorry to interrupt to the point that you make. I also didn't know is that 80 percent of Saudi Arabians are on Twitter, whereas in the United States it's like 20 percent or something. Yeah.

[01:00:58]

So Twitter, because the the platform is this kind of decentralized information platform and because you can kind of whatever you can have a VPN, you can create a Twitter account under whatever your name is, Bugs Bunny 21. Right.

[01:01:14]

It has become on a global level in repressive, authoritarian regimes, ways that kind of like the resistance can communicate with each other.

[01:01:26]

And the Arab Spring only was able to happen because of Twitter, because they were able to plan events.

[01:01:33]

They were able to plan marches planned, you know, and Twitter became that platform for dissidents to basically assemble and what these authoritarian regimes learned and these Arab governments in the case of Saudi Arabia, you know, basically a a dictatorship, a monarchy which is similar as it is in the Emirates and and in Egypt, even though it's now, you know, it's technically not a monarchy, but it's but it's a dictatorship is is that if you could control Twitter, if you could control the narrative on Twitter, you could crush freedom of speech, you could crush opinion and that you can put forward your propaganda.

[01:02:22]

I mean, you even see this as happened in the Trump administration over the last four years where Trump has used the authoritarian playbook of using Twitter to basically bring forward false information, whether it's about election fraud, whether about, you know, voter fraud, whether it's about, you know, you name it.

[01:02:43]

Trump has used Twitter as his platform to disseminate false information lies. Right. Well, these governments understand that Twitter can be used for that.

[01:02:55]

And so Saudi Arabia puts together a plan to basically hire thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the kingdom to create false Twitter accounts and put forward on to Twitter these false goals of the kingdom. Mohammed bin Salman is a great reformer. Mohammed bin Salman's vision. Twenty thirty is the best thing that ever happened to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is this, this, this and this. Right.

[01:03:22]

And so Twitter is being flooded unbeknownst to the Saudi people with tens and tens of thousands of false tweets, all pro-government, all basically, you know, pushing forward this narrative. Then at the same time, Saudi Arabia is spending, you know, depending on who you talk to, hundreds of millions and billions of dollars with global PR agencies with the same thing that Mohammed bin Salman is the greatest thing to ever happen to Saudi Arabia. Right?

[01:03:55]

Well, Omar Abdul Aziz realizes that this is what is happening on Twitter in Saudi Arabia is not real. These accounts are not real. These are fake accounts. These are accounts basically owned and controlled by the government of Saudi Arabia to put forward false opinions and lies and and, you know, and false narratives about the kingdom. At the same time, what these accounts are doing is that anybody like, let's say, Omar Abdel Aziz or Jamal Khashoggi put forward a tweet saying, I disagree with Mohammed bin Salman.

[01:04:34]

This that these Sordi Twitter trolls are flies, this army of thousands, tens of thousands of people that have been hired to basically take control of Twitter all of a sudden flood this dissenters or, you know, person's Twitter account with screw you, you should die. This isn't true. Right? And so suddenly their tweet is completely suppressed, like it doesn't exist. And everything that is trending in the kingdom on on Saudi Arabia is pro government, pro monarchy, pro mobs.

[01:05:09]

So Jamal and Omar are working on basically a plan that they call the BS Army to take control of the flies where they're going to basically do the same thing that the Saudis have been doing on Twitter, except they're going to get dissidents within the kingdom and everywhere for them to create tons and tons of fake Twitter accounts. But they're fake. Twitter accounts will be basically putting forward freedom of speech, human rights. Right. And that and that ultimately this will be the war between the bees and the flies.

[01:05:43]

Right. That two can play at this game.

[01:05:45]

You want to put forward your false propaganda. All right. We'll put forward the truth and we'll, you know, tell the people what's really happening. So because Omar's phone is hacked with Pegasus and because Jamal's phone was hacked with Pegasus, Saudi Arabia knows what these two are up to and that they are basically trying to reclaim control of Twitter.

[01:06:09]

And this arguably is the biggest, probably single reason why they decide to murder Jamal, because it's one thing that Jamal is writing in The Washington Post, which was negative. But it's another thing if all of a sudden he and Omar in this army of dissidents basically can take back control of Twitter and Twitter is the way that Saudi Arabia gets their news.

[01:06:36]

This is so fundamental to the kingdom in their narrative and in the hacking of the phone, they're able to understand that Jamal is not only just writing in The Washington Post, they're able to understand that he's now working with a known dissident to take back control of Twitter. And I think that this was probably the breaking point where they decided that he needed to be murdered and they had tried to come to Canada and rendition Omar. Right. Just months earlier, those two dudes show up and try to cajole him into returning with promises that he'll get his own TV show and that NBC loves him.

[01:07:17]

But it's Khashoggi who's saying, don't do that. You don't want you don't want to do that. It's a trap.

[01:07:22]

That's right.

[01:07:23]

And and yet because falls into the same trap and and he falls into the same trap, you know, to accept. So they had agents basically came to Canada with Omar's brother in tow, basically is like a hostage, you know, like, hey, Omar, if you don't come back to Saudi Arabia and you know, we love you, which, of course was not true at all. You know, I just know that we've got your brother in.

[01:07:57]

Omar chooses not to go back to Saudi Arabia. And and after making that decision, they arrest his brother's 19 years old and the other brothers a couple of years older. And they have remained in a Saudi prison, tortured without charges for the last two years. And thirty three of his friends, just people that were linked to him, not dissidents, nothing. Just just by knowing Omar as basically this rendition tool of, hey, if you want your brothers to get out of jail, if you want your friends to get out of jail, you need to either be silent.

[01:08:39]

You know where you need to come back to Saudi Arabia, where you know you're either going to be imprisoned or be silenced, right. And so that Omar's not happened, that Omar's continued to fight. So, you know, he's still doing his YouTube show. I mean, I checked his Twitter account last night. He's got over a half million people now. Yeah, he's got a half a million followers. And and what happens on his YouTube show is every time he posts an episode in the kingdom and their lawyers basically say that whatever it is, there's like he's using copyrighted material he's using, they get it like they get it pulled down.

[01:09:20]

And so then he has to put it up somewhere else and they get pulled down.

[01:09:23]

But if you go on to his YouTube station, you'll see that, you know, gets pulled down, it goes back up and there's, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of followers that watch his essentially show, which is kind of like a I don't know how you would best describe it as a Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon. You know, it's like Bassem Youssef did in Egypt.

[01:09:45]

Are you familiar with him? He was sort of the Jon Stewart of Egypt. I've heard the name of the Arab Spring. He lives in the US now and he's been on the podcast. But it's a similar kind of situation.

[01:09:56]

Yeah, where where where Omar is the first guy to kind of create a show which is criticizing the kingdom, making jokes he's taking, kind of like looking at like US style talk shows. Right. And and does this show as often as you can, looking at all the Saudi Daily News and looking at all the Saudi Twitter feeds and all the false narratives that he puts together this show going like, OK, that's a lie.

[01:10:24]

That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie. And and and also, we've seen a lot of comedy into it and is doing like even like sketches and things like that.

[01:10:36]

And correct me if I'm wrong, but but Jamal's murder seems to almost perfectly coincide with the bees actually succeeding in getting their their message in their hashtags to trend number one on Twitter. Like those seem to almost happen at the exact same moment simultaneously.

[01:10:56]

Yeah. Yeah. And that and I don't believe that that was an accident. It was as this was taking steam, I think the decision was made within the kingdom of we're going to we're going to send a message. Mm hmm. And and when you understand that that their phones were hacked. Right. Then then, as you'll see in the film and in understanding the story behind this, you can see how that that danger grew. And I think, you know, Jamal couldn't imagine.

[01:11:42]

You couldn't believe that. His own country could do that to him, and he had actually went about a month before his murder because he was going back and forth between Washington, D.C. and Istanbul, where he's now with this with a lives there. Right. Right. And so they had decided that they were going to have a life in both places. He bought an apartment or condo for them in Istanbul and they were going to split their time. They're going to be together in Istanbul.

[01:12:19]

Then she'd come to Washington and study and, you know, go back to Istanbul. So he had bought a place for them in Istanbul. And he had originally went to the consulate in Washington, D.C. and actually met with the U.S. ambassador at the time to the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. at the time, who was Mohammad bin Salman's brother. Right. And he goes into the consulate in Washington, D.C., asking for these marriage papers and they say, we're happy to give you these papers, no problem at all.

[01:12:58]

But you need to get him in Istanbul. You know, you want to marry a Turkish woman.

[01:13:03]

You need to get him at the consulate in Istanbul. Right.

[01:13:07]

So he comes out of this meeting in Washington, kind of being welcomed. He's, you know, met with the prince, his brother, who he already knew. Right. And he's assured everything's fine. No big deal. You just need to go get him in Istanbul. So when he goes into the consulate in Istanbul, the first time they welcome him, they're nice to him, but they say, oh, hey, we need to prepare these papers.

[01:13:33]

But they knew that he was going to be coming to that consulate in Istanbul already, you know, so they go, OK, now we got a shot at them.

[01:13:43]

So because they were they weren't going to do it on American soil. Exactly right.

[01:13:48]

They weren't going to do it on American soil and the to the the like by Frication like you, you're going to have to come back in five days, allowed them to get their plan in motion and get these guys out from the kingdom to be in the consulate when he arrived.

[01:14:04]

But he was nervous like he brought Hadija with him the first time.

[01:14:08]

Both times. Both times he he wasn't quite certain that it was going to be OK.

[01:14:13]

Well, not only that. He left his phones and his computer and everything with Hadija because the. Both times that he went in, he basically left everything with with her and said, hey, if something happens to me. Here's a lot of conference information, here's your sanok ties information here, you know, here's these people to call. And so, you know, he goes in the first time and they're nice, Trumper warm to them and they say, no problem.

[01:14:48]

Jamal will give you the paperwork.

[01:14:50]

We just need a few days, come back in a week.

[01:14:54]

And so he leaves kind of going, OK, everything's OK. Right. And that gives them this week to essentially plan his murder. And he goes back a week, a week later. And, you know, when when he was was murdered.

[01:15:11]

And but clearly, you know, I mean, him leaving his devices with a Tisia was even on his return back when he there was I'm sure that part of him going like, OK, here's my phone. Here's my this and and in the transcript of his murder.

[01:15:33]

Which we have in the film and to this day, that transcript has not been released. There's only a few people in the world that have it. It's a CIA, British intelligence, the French, the Turks, of course, and me. And there's a whole story behind how I finally obtained the transcript. And in this transcript, you know, he makes note that he doesn't have his phones on him. He's asked to send a message to his son, telling him that he's OK and that if he doesn't hear from him for a few days not to worry and he doesn't, you know, have his phones with him and he even says, my fiancee or, you know, is waiting for me outside.

[01:16:25]

And so those devices and his computer and everything were brought into evidence. And I've been told that they did find Pegasus on those devices.

[01:16:37]

Mm hmm. The transcript is horrific. I mean, it's just it's gut wrenching. What's interesting is the Saudis were able to delay the investigation for something like two weeks. Right? I think it was the 15th of October before they finally let the Turks into the consulate. Yeah, thereabouts. I don't yeah. Sometimes I think it was it was a good two weeks and. Yeah. And in those two weeks, of course, they were able to clean up.

[01:17:07]

Right. The murder scene. And I quite as well as they should have. No, I mean, they they never found what's interesting and in the transcript, also's in the and I don't get into this in the film in great detail, but in the five or six days from the time he first answers the consulate and then goes back and returns, Saudi Arabia puts his mission into kind of high emotion and they actually bring two different teams. They're ahead of the murder.

[01:17:48]

One of the teams two days before he's murdered is to sweep the consulate for listening devices for bugs, and they don't find one. And the listening device was only in this one room where they had secure communications. And we still don't know to this day how that listening device got there. Whose device it was, was that the Turks was in another country handed over to the Turks.

[01:18:15]

Not sure that's super interesting because, yeah, that's never explained in the film. I never heard an explanation for who recorded it.

[01:18:21]

And the Turks will never tell you how they got it. You know, a prosecutor is like a bad ass. He is like out of like a bomb.

[01:18:33]

The accent is like, unbelievable. I mean, he's every filmmaker's dream in the eye.

[01:18:42]

You know, he's never spoke on camera about the crime to this day. I don't think there's a single interview out there of him other than what you'll see in the dissident.

[01:18:51]

And, you know, I think he carries a heavy burden with with this case in particular, um, in the wake of all of this becoming global news, you have mobs back in the kingdom trying to figure out how he's going to control this narrative that is quickly eluding his ability to manipulate. Right. Which gets us into the Pegasus hack of Bezos phone, which is fascinating. We all remember when, you know, his his personal pictures got leaked.

[01:19:28]

Was it The Post, The New York?

[01:19:30]

Yeah. Yeah, it was the like the Enquirer. I was Enquirer. Yeah. Yeah. And and basically there were stories coming out that Bezos was having an affair and that and that there's photos that were essentially going to be, you know, published of like selfies that he had sent to Lauren Sanchez. And there was even apparently nude or, you know, and then he pulls like the baller move of the century by getting ahead of it and making all of that available.

[01:20:06]

Right. He basically puts together this post on medium going, here's what's happened. I was hacked.

[01:20:17]

My phone was hacked and I'm not going to be blackmailed and they were trying to blackmail me, and this is all a blackmail extortion attempt because I own The Washington Post and the Saudis are mad at me because they are the Saudi Arabia to back up.

[01:20:40]

Bezos owns The Washington Post and and in the fallout of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

[01:20:45]

Right. Khashoggi wrote for The Post, so the Post has the biggest knife in the fight and they are pushing this story forward and the fascinating thing behind the Kosugi murder.

[01:20:59]

But what got the world involved was had Jamal been painted in the press, in the media as Saudi journalists and his consulate in Istanbul killed? Right.

[01:21:10]

It would have fallen on deaf ears. But because it's an American paper, the you know, New York Times, Washington Post. Right.

[01:21:18]

And they're putting forward this story that it's not just a it's not a Saudi journalist.

[01:21:24]

It's a Washington Post journalist. So now Jamal is essentially an American. And this catches the world's attention, had he not been a Washington Post journalist because in all the news wasn't Saudi journalist, it was Washington Post journalist.

[01:21:42]

And here's this publication that he had worked for. Right. And that's what caught the world's attention. It was Washington Post journalist. And so what numbers could you know, I guess separate in his mind is the idea that you can own a newspaper and not have control of the newspaper. Right. Right.

[01:22:05]

So just because you own The New York Times doesn't mean in the United States that you control The New York Times if you're a free paper. Right. You don't have control over what the paper actually writes. You can you know, I'm sure there's whatever I mean, for Fox News basically putting forward its thing, but ultimately there is still a freedom of press there.

[01:22:27]

So The Washington Post is pushing this forward from this story forward globally and making the Khashoggi murder, you know, a huge, huge global story. They're running ads in the paper, full page ads in the paper behind the murder. They're putting up billboards. They are you know, The Washington Post is not letting this story die. And embers, in his mind is going well. Hey, Jeff Bezos, you own The Washington Post. You can make this stuff kill it.

[01:22:55]

And behind the scenes, those guys had been in communication with each other. Yes. Was trying to get Amazon up on its feet in the kingdom. Right.

[01:23:04]

So they had they had business dealings together. There was a whole deal for, I don't know, billions of dollars of a cloud server that Amazon was going to do with the kingdom. And and lo and behold. NB's, Hack's Babesiosis phone with Pegasus, but or we think it's Pegasus, but he had actually been hacked before the Kosugi murder.

[01:23:31]

Hmm.

[01:23:31]

So he had been sending Babesiosis messages and all of a sudden Basils gets this video message of like a soccer match in Saudi Arabia versus I can't remember Norway and Basso's clicks on this message. And it's like how what is this message? You know, he's kind of perplexed by it below. And behold, that was hacking his phone. And so in the fallout of the Shoghi murder, as all of a sudden Babesiosis affair is being leaked to the public, you know, Bezos brings on an investigation team of, you know, forensic cyber examiners who go into his devices and they're watching the data stream out of his phone.

[01:24:20]

Right. And linking it to a server known to be a Saudi server, you know.

[01:24:27]

And so, you know, you go, OK, well, how else was this information coming public? It was clear that that, you know, that he had been hacked and. Yeah, so, you know, you go, OK, if you can hack the richest man in the world. Right. Can't you? I mean, that's the kind of scary message that you leave everyone with. Like, nobody is out of bounds here.

[01:24:54]

Nobody is out of bounds. And I think one of the themes in the film is. The battlegrounds of the world right now are not being fought with weapons, it's being fought in the cyber sphere and these are the biggest weapons in the world right now. You look at the Pecha virus a couple of years ago in the Ukraine, that was a Russian virus that shut down the entire power grids in the Ukraine and basically completely hobbled the Ukraine and all these major shipping companies.

[01:25:31]

Andy Greenberg writes about this in his book called Sand Worm. And a lot of people don't know this story, but this was the single biggest cyber attack in the world's history so far against Ukraine because it crippled all the global shipping agencies. It crippled FedEx and basically infected their systems and brought down these companies to their knees for this period of time and cost billions and billions of dollars. And to this day, people don't realize what happened.

[01:25:59]

And this was a cyber attack or in the case of these cyber firms like so is what you read.

[01:26:07]

And what you learn is that there is hacking software. You know, there was an idea a few years ago, OK, you know, Apple and the government trying to get Apple to turn over codes and stuff.

[01:26:17]

They don't need that anymore. There is now private software being developed by private companies. In this case, this is a company called ENSO out of Israel. All of these sales have to get approved by the Israeli government. But Israel basically is allowing the sale of this software to pretty much any government in the world, because when they sell this software, Israeli intelligence is also gaining insight into who each one of these companies wants to hack, you know?

[01:26:51]

So, OK, so Israel and NSA sells Pegasus to the Saudis, right?

[01:26:59]

And, you know, why would Israel want Saudi Arabia to have this hacking technology?

[01:27:04]

Well, not only is lucrative and they're paying millions of dollars per year for these licenses, but on the back end. Right.

[01:27:12]

And so and Israeli intelligence are able to know who Saudi Arabia is hacking, who they're after, what they're told. So, no, I mean, it's just it's it's really nutty. But what you understand is that this technology is also now in private hands.

[01:27:31]

And much like with Snowden, you know, unveiled to the world, you know, with what, you know, our government was doing and what the NSA was doing and in listening into people's devices and, you know, and all the information he brought forward, what you're seeing is that this is even much worse than we can imagine because governments around the world essentially would just somebody's phone number can go in and hack somebody's device, take control of that device, know everything about that person.

[01:28:11]

And this is and this is a completely unregulated part of of the cyber landscape, that there is no regulation in this regard other than, you know, the United States knows that the Saudis have this technology and they know the Emirates have this technology in the Emirates knows that, you know, other countries have this technology and the ability to destabilize geopolitics and do it essentially invisibly is so potent and frightening.

[01:28:42]

Right.

[01:28:43]

And what's interesting about this is it shares a common theme with with Icarus in that this search for a competitive advantage creates a situation in which the advantage is always ahead of the detection method. Right. In the sense that doping is always kind of two steps ahead of our ability to detect it and creates this, you know, this sort of tension between those two competing entities here. We have cyber warfare just miles ahead of our ability to even understand it, let alone preemptively get in front of it.

[01:29:21]

Yeah, I mean, it's a it's an interesting analogy. I never really thought about it that way. And that's a really good and interesting analogy, which is I think what we see as a society in technology is every time we have this, a newer technology, another thing unleashed, it's incredible in some sense. And on the same hand, it's that more invasive and invasive technique. And and you can look at this across all these platforms, even like like Google.

[01:29:55]

Right. OK, so Google buys nest cameras.

[01:29:58]

Right.

[01:29:59]

And so now if you have a nest camera, the only way to actually have other people have access to the nest is to integrate it in through Google home. Right. But your Google home account is linked to your Gmail account and your Gmail account and your Google callouses link to all your Web searches and everything.

[01:30:19]

I mean, so you go, oh, my God, what kind of information does Google have on me?

[01:30:26]

They have access to my home. They have access to my cameras. They have access. You know, if your ring or Nasta, right. They have access to my security systems. They have access to my Web searches. They have access to my emails here. That right. And so you have a these companies, you know, whether that's Facebook and Instagram. And I mean, the other day I was literally thinking of going and taking a trip and was trying to figure out where to go.

[01:30:53]

And and, you know, I did a search for like the Bahamas. Right.

[01:30:59]

And all of a sudden on my Instagram yesterday, I'm getting ads about resorts in the Bahamas movie going, what?

[01:31:10]

Yeah. Why are my Instagram feed? Are resorts in the Bahamas coming up? And yet there they are.

[01:31:18]

The scarier thing is when you just say it out loud, you don't do a search and then you get the ads right, Siri, Google assistant, all that stuff.

[01:31:27]

So, you know, you have like sonar speakers and you fill up your Google assistant, you go, hey, Google Play, Led Zeppelin.

[01:31:34]

Right. And then the next thing you're doing, you're saying by the Led Zeppelin. Right.

[01:31:38]

You know, box set when you when you interviewed the cyber security expert do that, that kind of figured out that Omar's phone had been hacked. Did you have him look at your phone, John?

[01:31:52]

Elton Scott. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I've had my devices looked at. I have a monitoring device on my phone, which is actually hopefully would show off, all of a sudden my phone starts pinging towers that it isn't supposed to ping.

[01:32:18]

So the way that they look to figure out if you've been hacked, right. Is it's not like, oh, you've got some virus in your phone. And like, I think the way that most people think about, oh, I've been hacked or I'm getting malware crashing, the way that cybersecurity experts look at where you've been, if you've been hacked, is apparently our phones really only communicate to a handful.

[01:32:51]

And I don't know what that handful is, whether that's one hundred, two hundred, whatever it is, kind of global satellites and servers, you know, Google and and Apple and Amazon and all these different servers and satellites that essentially are in control of all data and communications. Right. So your phone is pinging like this satellite, right. Or pinging this this server connected to a satellite, whatever that technical think of it, I'm messing up, but.

[01:33:27]

Right. But it's not that many like. So, OK, if we're going on Amazon, right. It's it's going there or no matter what that search is, because our search engines. Right. It's like, OK, it's Google, it's Safari, it's whatever that is Firefox or something like that. And so everything that we're doing on our phones or our Apple or Android. Right. Right. Are ultimately going through these different massive infrastructure, you know, servers, satellites.

[01:34:00]

So the way that they figure out if you've been hacked is of all of a sudden there's information coming from your phone to essentially a satellite server. Right. That is not part of one of these big servers because there's no reason why your phone would be communicating with that server. And if and if what they're watching when they are looking at your phone is all of a sudden you have data being extracted out of your phone that your uploads are much more than your downloads, because why would you upload to be more than your downloads?

[01:34:34]

Right. Right. You're downloading only information. Yeah.

[01:34:38]

Not uploading information out of your phone. And it's communicating with one of these servers, which they don't know. That's how they're looking at whether or not a hack has happened.

[01:34:50]

It would seem relatively elementary to have an app that could run a diagnostic on that and let you know if something is awry.

[01:34:59]

Well, it's more complicated than that now because basically you would need to is as like John Mirliton Scott, who is the citizen lab in Canada. And they're and they're the ones who figured out that Omar had been hacked with Pegasus and the way that they figured out that Omar had been hacked with Pegasus. And they actually are, you know, one of the people, if not the people that discovered Pegasus and they've published other hacks at Pegasus and other people who've been targeted.

[01:35:32]

And if you go in and research, you know, the citizen lab out of Canada, out of out of Toronto, the monk school Torontos, where they're funded, is they in their research were basically looking at, you know, information streaming to these servers that they identified as not being part of, you know, all these ones that are legitimate. Right. Where your traffic would flow from Apple or Google.

[01:36:08]

And in identifying the servers, they were able to start identifying the use of these servers. And and so in the case of Omar, you when they got his device, they were seeing that essentially there was a device in Canada. Right. Communicating with one of these servers that they had deemed to be owned to be a Saudi server that they believe was using Pegasus software. And so I guess the the back end of this is understanding what all these servers are, where they are.

[01:36:49]

And they're they're always changing, too.

[01:36:51]

So the so the game kind of like the doping thing that you say is that it's always you're you're only as good as you. Earlier today, but if a new substance comes out right, that's unable to avoid detection or a new super drug, right. Well, you wouldn't test positive even though you're positive because it's undetectable, which is much like, OK, you're going to test for breast cancer, right? Well, the test for breast cancer is this test, right?

[01:37:22]

You're going to test this, this and this. And if that doesn't show up, then, well, then you don't have breast cancer.

[01:37:27]

But if it's a new strain of breast cancer, which they haven't developed test for or that they don't know about yet.

[01:37:32]

Right. You would test negative for breast cancer, even though you might have breast cancer. Mm hmm. Hypothetically, more for anything.

[01:37:39]

Well, the same applies to doping in, you know, substances and that you're only going to you know, you can't detect something unless you're being tested for that. And the same in the world of cyber and hacking. Is that OK? They're going to plug in all the known variables. But if there's a new variable, a new server, a new technology, a new right, they're not going to know if you've been hacked.

[01:38:02]

Yeah, it is really frightening. Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:38:09]

Amazingly, in the wake of all of this, we see politicians, you know, standing up, calling for action to do the right thing. And we're talking about people like Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul. Right. And yet we then see you kind of conclude the film with, you know, Trump vetoing any any kind of deleterious action that would that would harm the kingdom. Well, so where does that leave us? Like geopolitically? Like, what do you make of how this whole thing kind of shook out?

[01:38:45]

Well, to backtrack into that. You what we see in in in the film is that there has been no punishment for Saudi Arabia for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. There has been no meaningful sanctions taken not only in the United States, but by all members of the G20. And what we see was there was bipartisan support from both the Republicans and the Democrats to have sanctions, to stop weapons sales to Saudi to basically, you know, attempt to stop the war in Yemen and that ultimately the Trump administration vetoed all these actions.

[01:39:32]

And in Bob Woodward's book that he just published, where he had recorded all these conversations with Trump, Trump actually flat out said and he said, I saved embassies ass. So this is actually something that Trump is proud of, that he basically protected the relationship with himself or the United States, whatever you want to look at it, and Saudi Arabia, by not punishing Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi or in stopping weapons sales or standing up against the war in Yemen.

[01:40:06]

So, you know, this is something that, you know, the Trump administration is very proud of, despite what you've seen is bipartisan support in the United States to basically take action to reassess the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia. Joe Biden actually on the second year anniversary of Jamal's murder, which just passed on October 2nd, put out a statement saying, you know, if I'm elected president, he's now been elected president. One of one of the things that I'll be doing is reassessing the U.S. Saudi relationship, looking at sanctions, looking at action.

[01:40:46]

And, you know, and he basically sent out a tweet, you know, like justice for Jamal. And even since he's been president elect, he's said again that he is planning to, you know, really dive in to us Saudi relations in light of all their human rights abuses and what's happening in the kingdom.

[01:41:07]

So there appears to possibly be some sort of positive outcome coming from this. But to date, you have seen no member state of the G20 and or the United States take any action against this.

[01:41:25]

And this really just speaks to, I think, the global economic relationship of Saudi Arabia and the world, unlike, you know, let's say a country, you know, even like Russia, right.

[01:41:43]

Where the economic stakes are not as high because of the investment. What we see out of the kingdom is because Saudi Arabia has the single largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, meaning that they have more money to invest into other essentially countries and buy stuff than any other country. And they are so liquid in their investments. They're also basically, you know, all the money in Softbank, the world's largest hedge fund is Saudi money.

[01:42:16]

Right, that not just governments, but companies around the world don't know how to say no to the investment. And in case of this film.

[01:42:29]

Yeah, which that leads me into the question around distribution of this movie and how you financed it.

[01:42:35]

We have we have fought a real uphill battle, the in the making of the film, the Human Rights Foundation for Halvorson who started the foundation, Garry Kasparov is its is its CEO decided to fund the film because a human rights foundation actually had invited Jamal Khashoggi to one of its freedom forums called the Oslo Freedom Forum that they hosted every year in Oslo, where they bring together dissidents from all over the world that have either fled their countries or escaped from their countries or, you know, to come and speak about these oppressive regimes and what's going on in their country.

[01:43:23]

And so the work of the Human Rights Foundation aligns with this film, and they have helped to fund and give voice to dissidents all over the world from oppressive regimes in fighting for freedom of speech in democracies. And ah, and whether it's the you know, the Agha's in China or whether it's what's been going on. In Venezuela or whether it's, you know, oppression in Russia or, you know, you name it, the Human Rights Foundation, and their mandate is basically to try to protect human rights and freedom of speech in democracies and fight against authoritarian dictatorships.

[01:44:10]

And so when I decided I wanted to make this film for Helverson and I met through a mutual friend and he said, hi, I actually met Jamal. He was at the Oslo Freedom Forum back in May and he was murdered in October. And, you know, we've been talking to Omar Abdel Aziz to invite him to in Oslo Freedom Forum. And Yad al Baghdadi, who you see in the film, is another dissident actually has spoken many times at the Oslo Freedom Forums and involved with the Human Rights Foundation.

[01:44:45]

You know, we'd love to we'd love to do this. And so they came in and turned back the film and had been my partners in making the film. And we premiered the film at Sundance, which is so crazy that that was nine, 10 months ago and it was just before covid. Right. It was like the last week, just before it was literally. Yeah, exactly. As soon as you got home clamped down. And apparently Sundance now turns out to be like a super spreader of that.

[01:45:19]

Right? Right. That's right. And at our premiere there is Hillary Clinton came to the premiere and Alec Baldwin.

[01:45:27]

And and each time we show at Sundance, we have standing ovations and the most incredible reviews of I've ever read from the trades. And the critics that were there was really taken back by them. And and we come out of Sundance on, you know, the top 10 films of a Hollywood Reporter and the top ten variety and the top eight of AP and all these, you know, incredible accolades to not a single offer of distribution, not one that speaks louder than words.

[01:46:07]

Not a penny being offered for the film, not a dollar. Nothing that is so bad here is, you know, the company that I did Ikarus with that I believe is my partners. Silence, hmm? Amazon and Jeff Bezos and me believing that Will Bezos would have a knife in this fight.

[01:46:34]

You'd think he'd be the number one choice. Silence. And every one of the major global streamers, global media, entertainment companies, studios that could have acquired and given life to this film Silence. And what we see here is essentially that. The dollar, the Saudi investment, the potential to grow in that region, to gain subscribers into Saudi Arabia and here, you know, Netflix took off Hassan Monologist Radio for criticizing NBC.

[01:47:16]

They pulled like a whole episode. Right. They pulled a whole episode in just a few weeks ago.

[01:47:21]

They announced an eight slate deal with Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia invested in Netflix.

[01:47:30]

Are they an equity partner in that company? I have no idea.

[01:47:34]

But I think what we see and it speaks. Not just to Netflix, it's not it's it's across the board, is that. Human rights and freedom speech isn't just in in danger and being suppressed.

[01:47:55]

In places like Saudi Arabia, it's here in the United States where essentially our economic interests and these interests of these massive companies that have the ability to disseminate information, that have the ability for a global audience to see something and learn and take action and stand up against forces like this and bring about change, are choosing their business interests and economic interests and their shareholder interests over what their audiences actually would want to see or would want to see on top of seeing love is blind.

[01:48:39]

And so it's a it's a it's a very we're in a moment here where these companies have grown so big and so powerful and we're in this huge global landscape.

[01:48:51]

Whereas years ago you could go, OK, hey, you're a company and you're just distributing the film for United States. So you're like, OK, we can put this on the United States, no problem. But now the formula is is global. And so nobody wants to put something out with the idea that, oh, you might upset China, you might upset Russia, you might upset Saudi, you might upset Egypt, you might upset Brazil, you might wherever you call it.

[01:49:23]

And so the appetite for content that actually is taking on subject matter such as this over the last couple of years has been completely and utterly diminished.

[01:49:36]

And and these companies are now operating much in the way of like a government where you're going, OK, do we punish the murder of Alexander Litvinenko? Well, if we do that, what are we doing, are we sending or are we starting a war with Russia? No, we're not going to do that. Are we going to stop doing business with Russia? No, we're not going to do that. Are we going to sanction Russia to the tune of gazillions of dollars so that it hurts our economies?

[01:50:05]

No, we're not going to do that. So ultimately we go. All right. We'll let you get away with murdering this dissident on foreign soil. And just like what has happened in the Khashoggi murder, where essentially they've been able to get away with it because of the amount of money in business and and investment. We're seeing this stretch way beyond government, and it's now in these media companies and corporations where a couple months ago Amazon announced that they were acquiring Suq Suke was essentially the Amazon of Saudi Arabia.

[01:50:42]

Right, so now Amazon owns Suke, so Amazon controls right commerce and the king commerce in the kingdom.

[01:50:51]

And so ultimately, the decision was OK. Acquire the dissident. Or continue billions of dollars of business that we're going to do in the kingdom. Yeah, it's not like the business, not a not a difficult economic decision to make. And it's amazing that we can all rally around a free speech issue when it's confronted with with, you know, a government that is trying to clamp down on it by way of of laws. Right. But here we are in the west where we technically have freedom of speech.

[01:51:28]

And yet economic interests are creating this unbelievable, chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas. And it's happening right underneath our eyes. We're seeing this progressive restriction as a result of those economic tectonic plates, but also from the people themselves. It's like we're we're policing ourselves when it comes to free speech. It's a very different conversation around free speech than that which, you know, we're talking about. When we look at places like Saudi Arabia. I have many friends who will go unnamed that had various projects in development with these major media companies that looked at things from.

[01:52:15]

We are on human rights levels, on political levels, on stories such as this and that these global streamers have all basically said, no, we're not going to do these stories anymore. I have heard stories of unnamed companies, but among these companies that basically have had shareholder meetings where they have discussed in these meetings that anything that is political, anything that were you, you know, take on the Trump administration or were to take on China or to, you know, go against you name it, we're no longer interested in.

[01:52:57]

And and the reason being is because the growth in these regions.

[01:53:02]

Right. Is more important than the human rights in these regions, and so, you know, ultimately, if you can expand, let's say, and have millions of subscribers in Saudi Arabia, a wealthy country. And have all this revenue from Saudi Arabia versus showing these awful human rights abuses in the country. Well, you're going to take the money over what is ethics and morality.

[01:53:33]

And I think it's been a it's been a rude awakening to me as a filmmaker and as an as an activist to think that this is kind of happening because I view that and that those who have wealth and power in a perfect world and especially in the Western world, should be the ones who are standing up and having the strength to shed light for the world into places where people are being oppressed or suppressed. And just like you see with the NBA in China or ESPN in China being able to walk away from all these abuses or what China's been doing in Hong Kong.

[01:54:23]

Yet all these companies are still doing business with China, despite them trying to turn Hong Kong into, you know, into into a dictatorship. Right. And yet nobody's willing to stop doing business with them.

[01:54:38]

And and we're seeing this across the board. And it's disheartening for someone like me who wants to continue to make films like this and bring stories like this forward, having to struggle to have this content seen. And and I would have thought that having had the honor of winning an Academy Award would have changed that. Right.

[01:55:10]

Giving you a little bit more latitude and door swinging wide open at Netflix. You would think, hmm, but that is not the case. And then on the other hand, you can see this from a company's perspective, right? You watching the dissident, how Jeff Bezos is able to be hacked. You watch how somebody is able to be chopped up and murdered. So if you're that company, right, on the flip side, you can imagine those internal conversations of going like, I don't want them to hack us.

[01:55:45]

I don't want them to hack my company. I don't want them to take down my servers.

[01:55:50]

I don't want them to launch a Twitter campaign against us. I don't want it, you know. Right. And not that you need to covid favor with members, but no need to antagonize him when there's so much business opportunity to be had potentially in the future.

[01:56:07]

Right. And there's so much risk to be had by taking that on. Right. And and I think that that equation.

[01:56:18]

Ultimately, I don't think the word is bad, decision making, I think leads into risk assessment analysis and each one of these companies or corporations, there's risk assessment and that risk assessment announcement is OK. On one hand, whatever, hundreds of millions of people will see the film and there'll be accolades and it'll be this that the other on the other hand, maybe X, Y, Z can happen. Another filmmaker I admire, Ryan White, who did the keepers, uh.

[01:56:54]

Did a film this year called Assassins', and it's on the murder of Kim Jong Il's half brother in Malaysia by the two women that basically poisoned him at the airport. Right. And you go to North Korea. Again, Ryan's film. Nobody has stepped up on a global level to distribute this, it's being distributed by a small distributor and I've never heard of it. Yeah, it's a great film. And again, he was at Sundance. And the story is the exact story of a dissident, which is all of these global streamers.

[01:57:31]

And here, Ryan, it had tremendous success with the keepers and Netflix. Right. And and ultimately they went, oh, well, the Sony hack, right, was the North Koreans. And that was really embarrassing for Sony.

[01:57:45]

And this was over a film, The Interview, which was a comedy, and all these global streamers going like, OK, they hack Sony, they mess them up, screw it. It doesn't matter that Assassins' is an important film. It doesn't matter that it's inside into North Korea. It doesn't matter that it shows how what this is. Not for us. We don't want the risk, and so I think there has to be a reimagining for storytellers.

[01:58:17]

Or activists that want to see to it that their content can be globally seen and and maybe a new platform is ultimately created, that that allows us. But counter to this is Briarcliff Entertainment Tom Wartenberg, who was running Lionsgate and then Open Road and and did Spotlight and did Crash and did Fahrenheit 9/11 and has been a real champion for, you know, for for difficult films that, you know, came forward, you know, about six months ago and acquired the film.

[01:59:03]

And so the dissident we had planned that it was going to come out into theaters, it was going to go on a thousand screens on October 2nd. And of course, with covid that that wasn't going to happen. So then we changed the plan again to December 18th and we're still in covid. So that's not happening. So now it's coming out in limited theaters where theaters are open December 25th and on January 8th, it will launch across all On-Demand platforms where people can rent the movie.

[01:59:40]

So it will be on iTunes, it will be on Amazon for purchase. It will be on Xbox and Roku and Fire Stick and Comcast and Direct TV and all those places. So I'm so I'm optimistic that, you know, it'll it'll find its way. It won't it's not going to be in front of, you know, a couple hundred million subscribers with a subscription to Netflix. But it will make its way into the world.

[02:00:12]

Yeah, it'll find its way in the December. Twenty fifth limited release is, you know, on before the year turns over is for Oscar consideration. Right. Isn't that still the thing it has to premiere in a theatrical way before. That's my understanding. Right. And then it'll be available after that January. And luckily our our partnership with the I guess they call it Pevar paid on demand company vertical is, you know, for for the longest time, I think it was a 45 day window.

[02:00:47]

You couldn't if you launched in a theater, you couldn't have it on demand within 45 days. But covid. Right, all of the rules are changing now. And so we're able to come into theaters on December 25th and be available for On-Demand. Yeah. On on January 8th. So, you know, excited for the film to to be seen because I, I really I just had to Jeni's Jamal's fiancee. I mean, she's become like a sister to me.

[02:01:18]

And for me, this film has gone so far beyond, um, making a film. I just feel so personally connected to the story. And and as an activist, um, you know, I'm still involved in this on a daily basis. Tisha came to Sundance, right. She came to Sundance. She still living in Istanbul. She's in Istanbul. She had she had got a place from Washington, DC who was starting her foundation to seek justice for Jamal.

[02:01:51]

And then covid happened and she went back to Istanbul and she's been there since. So hopefully on the other side of covid, she'll come back to Washington and resume work and hopefully with the Binit administration will be a much warmer reception to the advocacy and human rights work that she's seeking to do.

[02:02:13]

Where does the U.N. sit with all of this? I mean, a big part of the narrative of the film is kind of, you know, they're their own sort of investigation into what occurred and then Hadija testimony, you know, before the council. But what is their power to do anything and kind of where do they sit with the whole affair?

[02:02:34]

Well, this was another kind of Icarus analogy, if I could make, is I had always viewed that the World Anti-Doping Agency had authority. And what I came to understand is that their job is basically to just observe and report and be lame duck and they basically can't do anything. They like the security guard in the neighborhood who drives around but is kind of feckless. Exactly. They're the guys look like, OK, these guys are cheating. But yeah, we have no power to punish them, you know?

[02:03:10]

And and so that was the amazing thing that I saw, you know, in in in.

[02:03:15]

In Ikarus and the story of Rocancourt in this cheating is OK, you have this global regulator of world sport that also has no power to actually really do anything and enact punishment and that the power is actually within the sporting federations themselves and within the Olympics in this that the other and that water is really just the guy out there is like the watchdog pointing a finger. But there like a mall cop. Right? Well, I've found this same thing to be the case of with the UN.

[02:03:44]

So in in in the film, you see Agnes Calama, who is the who is a special repertoire of United Nations. She's a character, an investigator. She's French, but she also teaches at Columbia. And so on the outset, you go, OK, Agnes is. The U.N., she's actually not. She's a special rapporteur to the United Nations, meaning that she has been given permission by the United Nations to launch an investigation, her own independent investigation, under the umbrella of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

[02:04:28]

But she doesn't actually work for the U.N. She's like a contractor. It's complicated. There's all these special repertoires of the U.N. under different committees that are able to launch investigations that the U.N. will either provide a budget for and then ultimately let them speak. So Agnes does an entire investigation because Shoghi murder presents her findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

[02:05:00]

But the Human Rights Council is kind of like water. They're just there to observe and report. They have no power. Right. And the United States under Trump actually remove themselves from the United Nations, from the U.N. Human Rights Committee. If you can imagine it, the United States no longer has a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

[02:05:22]

How is that possible? How is that possible? Trump pulled us out of the. We're no longer part of the outrageous human rights Human Rights Council.

[02:05:36]

Unbelievable.

[02:05:37]

But Saudi Arabia is so, so, so Agnes presents her findings to the Khashoggi murders you see in the film to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. But like water, the only thing that they can do is really observe and report.

[02:05:56]

And ultimately, the U.N., the General Assembly, the Security Council have to take it up to do something about it.

[02:06:05]

And so. The Human Rights Committee doesn't have the power and and ultimately, despite the evidence, despite the report, despite the intelligence and the CIA and British intelligence and the transcript and the audio and everything else, the United Nations General Assembly, the Security Council has not taken up this investigation and is not sanctioned Saudi Arabia and has done nothing to take action against Saudi Arabia.

[02:06:35]

And not only that, you saw the G20 just hosted, you know, just weeks ago, a week ago in four in Riyadh.

[02:06:48]

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[02:06:50]

So when Hadija is testifying, that's not in front of the General Assembly. That's in front of the Human Rights Council. And you see right there, the Saudi contingent just basically get up and leave in the middle of that. And there's no penalty for that or any kind of repercussions.

[02:07:07]

It was it was startling. And I think, again, so.

[02:07:14]

We were allowed, which is kind of unheard of, to have a film camera, film cameras within the United Nations, let alone at the UN in an official United Nations, you know, Human Rights Committee meeting. But we were connected through Agnes and we got in touch with their communications office. And essentially they were like, OK, this is important. We'll let you come film this. And so we were granted a very special permission to go in there with our cameras to film Agnes's testimony.

[02:07:53]

And Tisia speaking in front of the United Nations, you know, Human Rights Committee asking for justice for Jamal. And as she goes to speak, the two Saudis that were there representing Saudi Arabia on this matter literally get up and walked out the door. So that did happen. That did happen at that time, because when I was watching and I was like I was wondering, I was like, I wonder if Brian edited this to make it look like got in the middle when actually they left at the end.

[02:08:25]

No, wow. That happened in real time. It was un believable, literally watching the Saudis not only deny any responsibility, say that this is a Saudi matter, but then had Tisia goes to give her. Two minutes, I can't remember three minutes of of asking for justice, and as she goes to speak, the two Saudi representatives get up and walk out the door.

[02:08:59]

It's insane, insane. Wow. Was there anybody that you wish you could have interviewed on camera that you just couldn't get to that would have made the story filled in some gaps?

[02:09:12]

No. And I there was a question. I don't go to Saudi Arabia for the film and I don't. I notice that. Have you ever been there? No. And I don't interview any Saudi, you know, NBC or or, you know, whatever.

[02:09:35]

Did you ever reach out to any of those guys? Like.

[02:09:38]

No. And the reason why is. Much like Ikarus. I had Gregory cough, which was a whistleblower blower, his evidence was solid.

[02:09:57]

The diaries, everything that he had brought forward was solid, had been proven, forensically proven through the McLaren report, proven through The New York Times, proving, you know, I mean, like the evidence is when you look at what he brought forward, you know, there's no denying it's it is what it is.

[02:10:18]

And all the investigation surrounding it proved it. So in this case of a Kosugi murder. Right. What was important to me was to get the evidence from the Turkish, which I got here about the investigation and why this is 100 percent to be believed and is an open and shut case, which is in the film, to get all of that, to basically present the story in a way of, you know, the untold story behind this murder. But to go in, let's say, interview Mohammed bin Salman.

[02:10:54]

Right. You already know what that interview was. Did you do it?

[02:10:58]

No. Did you know about it? Know who did it? I don't know, I mean, there was nothing to be gained by doing two things. One, alerting Saudi Arabia that I was making the film to trying to go to Saudi Arabia where, you know, you're risking your life, and three, basically bringing propaganda and rhetoric into something.

[02:11:21]

I didn't want to lend voice to that because that's not true.

[02:11:26]

So it to me, it was inconsequential to the narrative, the film, just like. OK, let's say I would have been able to interview Puton. And ask him, well, I know what Putin has to say about Gregory Ridgen called than the allegations, you can watch his his conferences. He's made multiple statements. He said that Gregory is a member of U.S. intelligence, that he's a spy, that he is a traitor, that he is crazy, that he belongs in a mental asylum.

[02:11:58]

I mean, and you're not going to catch him in a gotcha moment, right? It's all well, so great.

[02:12:02]

So I go and interview Putin. And what's he going to tell me? He's going to tell me I didn't do it be these are a bunch of lies and see Gregoris insane.

[02:12:10]

I mean, this is so we already know what WMD is going to say.

[02:12:15]

So what is the point of lending further credence to a false narrative when it's really not what the story is?

[02:12:23]

Mm hmm.

[02:12:24]

Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how everything plays out with Thembisa mean the arc being that he sort of originally positions himself as somewhat of a reformer and is able to kind of cover global popular opinion, then we kind of see that perhaps he's not that, but he's got his he's sort of planning his flag with his vision. Twenty thirty. And and there's Davos in the desert thing that ends up becoming kind of like a debacle. Right. So on some level, there is a backing up of the global community who is reticent to be, you know, too involved with this guy.

[02:13:03]

And yet there's so much money involved and so much opportunity, those two things being at odds with each other, like how does that play out as the money always win?

[02:13:12]

Well, the year the the Davos in Davos in the desert is embassies annual basically investment forum to bring together world investment leaders, CEOs of major fortune, five hundred and global companies to basically come and get investment from Saudi Arabia more to put investment into Saudi Arabia.

[02:13:37]

And two years ago, right after the Shoghi murder, many of these corporations, business leaders, governments, whatever, didn't come to pull out to Riyadh. They pulled out, but they still set like their third in charge, fourth in charge, kind of. What's that word? Culpable deniability.

[02:13:59]

We can't be seen if you like, but we actually still had Goldman Sachs couldn't be there, but his third in charge was there, you know.

[02:14:07]

I see. But this past year. They all came back. OK, so, you know, the money is too big, it's just it's too much to walk away from. The investment is too big, the cash is too much. And and Saudi Arabia's future essentially relies on no longer being dependent on oil. Right. Right.

[02:14:38]

So in that regard, NB's is a great reformer, meaning, OK, he is a young prince. He's 35 now, right. 34. And he realizes that the future of his country is basically not as being the world's oil supplier as Tesla. And, you know, electric cars and all this stuff is is gaining and gaining, gaining.

[02:15:06]

And companies like Neo and China, you know, is the Tesla rival. I mean, their stock is up, I don't know, ten thousand percent this year. Right.

[02:15:14]

So we see this future of energy unfolding. And so arguably over the next 10, 20 years, the right, the reliance on oil is going to become less and less and less. So the only way that Saudi Arabia can survive is to take all of these. Trillions of dollars. Yeah, this massive liquidity and well invested globally and put it to use globally either to bring investment into the kingdom or to invest outside of the kingdom so that they have major stakes in this company or own, you know, whatever it is, hundreds of millions of shares of Uber, you know, all these different investments that they've made to either return investment to the kingdom because they're not going to get that from oil anymore or to bring investment into the kingdom because it can you know, it can grow.

[02:16:06]

And also to educate the Saudi people are to to basically be computer programmers, to be to build, to construct, to to basically do what what we've been doing here in the United States and other and other economies.

[02:16:22]

So what you see in the UAE. Right.

[02:16:25]

And so and Saudi Arabia in the UAE are best friends and in many cases considered like embassies, like, you know. Right. Godfather, you know, like that embassy takes his direction from embassy in the Emirates.

[02:16:43]

So clearly, embassies is right on that. And that's part of the vision. Twenty thirty is how to basically diversify the kingdom. One of the things he did was he brought Saudi Aramco public, which there was a lot of controversy over that because a lot of people didn't think that the state's oil company should be brought public. But I mean, they only sold like like five percent of it. But in so doing overnight, they created I think it's the second most valuable company in the world.

[02:17:16]

Apple, I think, has surpassed it now. But it's you know, Saudi Aramco is worth like, I don't know, one point seven trillion or something like that. But that was the ability for again, for others to invest. In Saudi in Saudi Arabia, you look at these, the oil war that they created with with Russia this past year, which has led to this, you know, basically the lowest oil prices we've seen in a generation was, again, basically how to infuse the kingdom with cash and and basically, you know, expedite the their oil supply to basically flood money.

[02:17:59]

You know, just these are all ways that NBC is trying to diversify the kingdom and open it up to investment. And in many ways, there's a lot of positive things about this. And Jamal Khashoggi said that many of the things that NBC was doing was positive. At the same hand, you have Luján Batool, the female activists who basically advocated for women to drive in Saudi Arabia on trial right now in Saudi Arabia. And what is she on trial for?

[02:18:32]

She's on trial for basically freedom of speech, even though now women are allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia because it was her idea and it was her basically pushing this. She was arrested and she sat in in a prison for the last two years, tortured. And her trial is now going on in Saudi Arabia for I don't remember what the exact charges are. It's like, you know, crimes against the state that basically she spoke against the kingdom. Wow.

[02:19:02]

So even though that now reiterates today, she's she's being tried for basically instigating what is now law.

[02:19:10]

Right. It wasn't a you know, so and and so this is continued. So, you know, it's it's complicated. I was thinking of a subject for a second, but you talk about this cyber threat and like Pegasus. Right. And access to governments or these companies, you know, can happen to our devices. And what's become clear to me, which I think we're going to see in the next several months, is that not only is that technology here, all of us on planet Earth are about to have this on our phones.

[02:19:52]

When you think about what's happened with covid and coronavirus. Right, the only way out of this is vaccine. And arguably, the only way out of this is that every single person on the planet can prove that they've been vaccinated. Mm hmm. So how are we going to be able to prove that we've been vaccinated? You can already see this, there's going to be an app on our phones. And every single place where we go. Whether it's a restaurant, whether it's an airport, whether it's shopping at Costco, whether it's Whole Foods, whether it's walking into the door of the business, right.

[02:20:32]

You're going to open up this app on your phone. They're going to scan it. It's going to show your photo. There's rich roll. It's going to show the date he was vaccinated. It's going to show when he was vaccinated. It's going to show that he's covered negative and then you're going to be allowed to enter the premises or who's going to control this app.

[02:20:49]

Our government this is going to be a national international database. And I guarantee that as this vaccine rolls out within the next five, six months or whenever, this is the only way every single person on the planet, in the Western world, at least to begin with, will have to make a decision. Do we want to go to a concert? Do we want to go fly on a plane? Do we want to go to a restaurant? Do we want to go to a store?

[02:21:17]

Do we want to go into the market? And the choice will be yes or no, kind of much like, you know, what happened in the end as as Christianity, you know, made its way through the world, which was, you know, a gun or a knife to your head. Do you accept Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior? Yes. You live. No, you die. I mean, that was that was the spread of of Christianity throughout the world.

[02:21:41]

And this is going to be essentially our new reality, for better or for better or for worse, tracking every single place that you go.

[02:21:49]

And that gets added to some database. Exactly. You know, to kind of quote this social dilemma, like we are the product and the data mining that can transpire when there's an app that basically logs every single place that you go. How long you're there, when you when you enter and when you depart, what is Nuti is we're already dealing with this in the you know, OK, we you know, OK, Google has a lot of data.

[02:22:16]

Facebook has a lot of data or credit cards. Right. You can go pull up the credit card statement. You go, OK, Brian, one here. Brian went there. Brian went to this restaurant. But we in our minds don't go. Oh, our government knows that. The government knows that. Whatever it is, I stayed at a Ramada Inn or I stayed at a Ritz Carlton.

[02:22:37]

Right. We go, OK, our credit card company knows that, but our government doesn't know that well.

[02:22:45]

Starting basically right now, our government and the international governments around the world are not only going to know everything about us, they're going to know every place we walk into.

[02:22:58]

They're going to know whether or not I shop at Gucci or whether I shop at Costco. They're going to know if I eat dinner at Nobu or if I went to McDonald's.

[02:23:10]

They're going to know everything about us, where we go, where we've been, where we travel, what airline we bought, because that is the only way when you actually think about what's going to happen with this covid vaccine that it can actually be right. Successful meaning, OK, you're going to have to show when you enter a place that you've been vaccinated and if you don't show you've been vaccinated, you're not going to be able to go to the store.

[02:23:41]

You're not going to be able to get on the plane. You're not going to be able to go anywhere.

[02:23:44]

There's got to be an analog solution to that somehow, though. I doubt it. I mean, I think the analog solution is, oh, you don't have a smartphone. So they're going to give you like a driver's license. They'll have like a chip. Right. Or something. But the driver's license is going to be the same thing because they're going to scan the driver's license and it's going to go into the same database. Right. So I think, you know, this this we've been dealing with this for years.

[02:24:10]

But, you know, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist. And so I don't view this as a conspiracy theory at all. And I don't view this as a, you know, oh, wow. But that Big Brother moment is truly upon us. I mean, it is here and it's not even the now. I mean, this is the moment is upon us. And when you look at what's going to happen over as the way that this vaccine rolls out and you just use common sense, you go, well, of course, this is what's going to happen.

[02:24:41]

You're not going to be able to enter a restaurant unless you show you're going to have to establish it. And and this is a national international protocol, meaning, OK, you arrive in Switzerland where drop orders. Yeah.

[02:24:53]

You and this is going to be global. You go to a restaurant in Zurich, you're going to scan the app, you go to a restaurant in Italy, you're going to go anywhere in the world.

[02:25:02]

Right. You're going to have to show that you've been vaccinated and so now Brian and Rich roll it, every person on the planet, unless you're living in a tribal village in Africa, right?

[02:25:16]

Everything we do, everywhere we go, everything we shop.

[02:25:19]

And you think about this just in the case of, like, you know, anything what this is or, you know, the counter argument is going to be similar to the arguments that that you heard with Snowden in that, oh, it's just metadata we don't actually know anything about, you know, what you did specifically. We're just getting ones and zeros about whether people entering and leaving are healthy. Right. I mean, I'm sure that'll be the response, of course, unless they want to know, unless unless they go.

[02:25:56]

We thought the FBI like we need to we we hope, Brian, we think John Smith might be whatever. Right. We're running a fraudulent business. Yeah. And then boom at the end, instead of instead of subpoenaing the credit card, subpoenaing the bank subpoenas, you know, doing that whole process. So unless I was running for office. Right, let's pull them out. We don't like this guy.

[02:26:20]

And you go, oh, whoa, this guy's staying at this place.

[02:26:27]

He's on this airline. He's there saying that it did it did it clearly.

[02:26:30]

But when he gets behind a microphone, he says this instead. Yeah, we can use that. I think right now I think what is what is a do we what are we going to do?

[02:26:41]

It's Minority Report. It's it's all this stuff that we've seen for years and years and in movies and science fiction and Blade Runner and in nineteen eighty four, which was, you know, we latched on to nineteen eighty four as the theme of Icarus, because not only was that Gregory's famous favorite book, but it's that whole idea that Big Brother is watching, that you're never going to beat the system, that ultimately the system has the strength and the government is, is, is, is who is in charge.

[02:27:18]

And you know, you see this in the dissident or not only in the murder of Jamal, but but the aftermath of this, that there's no punishment and that my film doesn't get distributed by a major streamer and the government's not right. It's all these themes, this Orwellian theme of 1984. And now we're seeing it in our lives that I think and I think covid for better or for worse, because we all want to get back to our lives, is we're all going to line up and sign up for it.

[02:27:53]

Is that Big Brother moment. It is upon us. It is that true? True, true. Big Brother moment. Hmm. That's very dystopian.

[02:28:02]

Note to end this whole thing on I think we could do is, you know, your movies always have a call to action too.

[02:28:10]

Like how can somebody who is who sees the film or listens to this and feels inspired to get involved, like where do you direct that attention?

[02:28:20]

Well, we you know, the Human Rights Foundation, every everything the film was basically made through charitable donations. A lot of the marketing and advertising, again, is being supported through charitable donations. And that's all coming from the Human Rights Foundation. So, you know, I think there's a couple of ways to get involved. One doesn't involve, you know, any money. It's it's it's purely what we saw with the Arab Spring or what we see in great movements for Black Lives Matter or ME2 or any one of these movements that take action is they started the, you know, at an individual level and it grows and grows and grows and voices are heard.

[02:29:15]

And I think that in the case of this, there's a way to have your voice heard, which is, you know, you send a letter to your congressman, to your senator, you go on their their websites and you send an email and you say, hey, you know, I want you to take take action against human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. I should be punishment for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. There should be accountability. I don't condone you, Emmanuel Macron or you Justin Trudeau or you name the person.

[02:29:49]

Right. Doing business with this country so long as they are.

[02:29:54]

Beheading eight hundred nine hundred people a year for doing nothing more than tweeting, so long as women are sitting in jails because they advocated for the right to drive or people are being imprisoned simply for voicing an opinion. Right. So there's that. And that is a call to action. The other, of course, is looking at the Human Rights Foundation and either getting involved with them on a volunteer level or getting involved in a donation base because the work that they're doing through the Office of Freedom Forum.

[02:30:30]

And if you do a deep dive, I mean, it's, you know, countries all over the world that they are supporting dissidents. They are supporting people who have otherwise been forced to leave their country essentially for wanting free speech or have, you know, or or family members of people who have been murdered in these countries for fighting for freedom of press or freedom of speech or human rights. So that's the other place to get involved. And then, you know, I think is as Biden takes office, I believe that there's a potential real kind of reimagining of the US Saudi relations.

[02:31:11]

And there's the, you know, yet another way to get involved and that sort of advocacy. And I mean, I think I think those are are the ways to to get involved, to make an impact and hopefully most powerfully is to see the film and to tell your friends about this film, because that leads to change. What happened with Ikarus was the film being on Netflix and being seen had. A ten thousand times bigger impact than The New York Times, than CNN, than all of the stories and everything before, because all of a sudden there was a global audience that could see this film.

[02:32:01]

And that pressure led the IOC, the Olympic Committee, to take action. And that is still survive to this day. And I believe that this film is seen by enough people can have the same effect on foreign policies all over the world regarding Saudi Arabia. And it's not so much about punishment for members. It's not, oh, does Mohammed bin Salman wind up in a jail? That's unrealistic. But can this film lead to pressuring change that? Tens of thousands of people that are falsely jailed in Saudi prisons are released and allowed to have freedom of speech or allowed to voice their opinions on Twitter without fear of retribution.

[02:32:47]

I believe that that is possible.

[02:32:50]

You know, if enlightenment comes and sometimes, you know, a leader can become enlightened because he realizes that by by oppressing opinions doesn't doesn't really lead to any good, that you can actually be a kind leader, that you can be a good leader, that even if you're a king, it doesn't mean that you need to be a bad king. You can be a good king. And that's kind of my hope with this film.

[02:33:20]

And that was kind of Shoji's whole thing early on, right? That was his whole thing.

[02:33:25]

Yeah.

[02:33:26]

I mean, his last breath and everything was, you know, like I mean, hey, I'm not I'm not I'm not calling for, you know, the French Revolution here.

[02:33:40]

He wasn't, you know, this this he was not advocating, you know, to go round up the royals and behead them. Yeah.

[02:33:48]

He was advocating the smallest of changes that simply that the royal family opened up the system to more of a parliamentary system that he believed.

[02:34:00]

And he said this over and over again, that one man's opinion, the leadership of one person and only one person under any situation cannot be good that the best leadership has to be. Yes, there's a leader like a president, but that there are other voices that are heard. And what he saw and saw in the kingdom is that there was no other voice other than MBBS. And what's outlined in the film also is the round up at the Ritz Carlton, where he arrests all the other princes and business leaders and shake them down for money.

[02:34:41]

What he's done since taking power is the crown prince is basically, you know, lock up anybody who can oppose him, that he goes, hey, this is this is not the best way to lead.

[02:34:53]

The best way to leaders is through kindness, through allowing other opinions and listening to other opinions and ultimately not in service to to, you know, the global the sort of prosperity that he seeks and the approval of the global community upon which he is reliant upon if he wants to actualize his vision 2030.

[02:35:18]

What's really strange is, you know, the trip that he took to the United States, which was just months before the Shoghi murder, I think, and I can be misquoted here. I think it was like March of twenty eighteen. And Kosugi was murdered in October. Twenty eighteen. I'm pretty I'm pretty sure it was March thereabouts. He comes to the United States, Mohammed bin Salman, and he had hired all these companies like McKinsey and all these huge consulting firms that he was paying hundreds of millions of dollars to basically promote him in Washington and among business leaders as the great reformer.

[02:36:00]

Is this young prince this great you know you know, this guy is is is loved and he is so cool and he's hip. And and even when he was in the United States, he was wearing a suit right now and he wasn't wearing a headdress and he wasn't wearing the traditional Saudi garments. Right. So it's like, OK, this is a enlightened Islam. This is an enlightened leader. He's Western. Right. And that's how he presented himself.

[02:36:31]

And he took these meetings with everybody from.

[02:36:35]

Obama to to Jeff Bezos, to Bill Gates, to, you know, on and on and on and on Elon Musk, you know, and they set up and he went to Washington and then he came to Los Angeles and took over the entire four seasons until he shut the entire hotel down. I mean, like I mean, what an ego I'd be like, really. You needed to take the entire hotel, all whatever it is, 300 rooms.

[02:37:04]

Like, did he do the thing where they fly in, you know, on their own jet and then have all their cars, like in the car?

[02:37:10]

Yeah. I mean, when you've seen this guy with the resources. No, I mean, he's literally flying on like his own Airbus. Right.

[02:37:17]

And not only is he on, like, his own Airbus or whatever it is, he's then got like fighter jets following us here.

[02:37:25]

You see that in the movie, refueling him as he flies and then he lands and there's and, you know, whatever it is, there's the Airbus. Then he's like got a 747. I mean, it's it's the most it is the most crazy, over-the-top, insane. You know, you think our president or whatever the Secret Service or something travels, you know, Air Force One, forget about it.

[02:37:48]

I mean, this is this is a thousand times that I mean, this is you know, this is insane.

[02:37:55]

I mean, but I remember when he came to the US and it was, you know, was this there was that sense that, you know, this great reformer is here and things are going to change.

[02:38:05]

But where I was going with this is that consultants and security experts that I said is so apparently wherever he went.

[02:38:15]

So he locked himself up in this Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. And then he did the same thing in Silicon Valley and. He would not go meet with anybody, so all the meetings were hosted on his turf, right. And there were all these like silver briefcase that were being pulled in.

[02:38:34]

And and one of the the guys in the film, the head of cyber security guy who was running a White House cyber security and FBI cyber security is that there is a lot of beliefs and apparently, you know, investigations that they believe that they were essentially using these meetings. He was getting the numbers, phone numbers of people like Jeff Bezos. Right. And then he could then deploy Pegasus on the because because they they they were hacking Basils months before the Shoghi murder.

[02:39:14]

So you wonder, who else did he get? Wow. Who else did he get? So these these meetings, while they're for business, he was also using it to basically hack the phones of leaders all over the world, like, hey, let's stay in touch on WhatsApp.

[02:39:32]

Right, right. Right. Hey, whatever. Hey. Nice to meet you. Elon Musk. What's your number? Hey, what's your number right here? Oh, yeah.

[02:39:42]

You would think like after after the Bezos thing, all those guys are like, you know, looking at they're getting somebody on their phone to make sure they lock down.

[02:39:51]

I don't I certainly don't know that for a fact. But it would be a it would be a wise thing to do. I would say. Well, if all you wanted to do is make documentaries about subjects like this, you would be able to do that for the rest of your life. I think, you know, even the idea of doing one around the vaccine or around, you know, Saudi investment in, you know, United States entertainment companies, like there's no end to these threads that you can pull on the themes that, you know, obviously speak to you.

[02:40:23]

You know, I I think that what will be interesting for me is this this film has been really two full years of my life, and it was a year and a half to make it. I'm still working on this every single day, you know, to two years into it. And so these stories really take over my life. I mean, because Icarus was such a personal story and I'm still very, you know, involved. They actually just passed in Congress and the Senate.

[02:41:05]

The Rada, the rank of ACTA Antidoping Act, just passed last week through the Senate. It's waiting for Trump's signature, which is going to be incredibly gratifying, which is amazing.

[02:41:15]

Which of actually has a law passed in him that the United States has passed to basically try to manage global doping in sports because water is so ineffective and basically criminalizing this in the US courts and there's all these logistics around it. But basically, it makes it that if an athlete comes to the United States and if, you know, there's a chain called the Anti-Doping Act just just passed and in Russia is still banned from global sport.

[02:41:46]

And so these it's it's lived on. And so I think for me, it's really looking at stories that I think that I can tell that can possibly have a global impact, that can have a resonance behind it and live on. I'm hoping that the dissident and the story behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi will be that and certainly in other subject matter that that I'm looking at. And I think the the hard thing and the question kind of becomes, what is that future in having material like this distributed?

[02:42:28]

Because it is becoming more and more difficult. And, you know, just for example, and we talked about this, but had the Human Rights Foundation not come in and supported this film. It wouldn't have got made.

[02:42:42]

You know, I had went to all sorts of people before, you know, for and I meet up and they were all scared to finance it. Right. And so, you know, when you have this level of fear going on that is perpetuating societies.

[02:43:02]

The question is, is what is that next story and will that next story be able to be just told honestly? And that kind of leads into the whole whether it's, you know, the false narratives going out, going on around, you know, election fraud or it's the false narratives that get put out of Russia or Saudi or anything else. I think it's becoming harder and harder to just have something. Just go. The truth is the truth is the truth, and we used to go, you'd pick up a New York Times and go, OK, it's New York Times, it's the truth, right?

[02:43:42]

And now you even have 50 percent of the country going. The New York Times is not the truth. The New York Times is fake news. And you go, OK, how does this come to a place where this stops, where the news becomes the news again? Truth becomes truth again. Facts become facts again. And I don't have those answers.

[02:44:06]

But finding our way back to that is very difficult. And the irony being, of course, that we've never had greater immediate access to more information. And yet our level of trust in that information has never been lower. Meanwhile, there's this squelching of expression that is making it more difficult for films that are endeavoring to tell the truth or shed light on a difficult truth like your own film. And how do we see our way forward from that? Like it does feel like somebody should put together a streaming platform that is just all about stories like this that are that are difficult.

[02:44:44]

And it's got to be about the truth and the message and not about how it's going to fare in the global marketplace or, you know, how are we going to grow this streaming enterprise across the world and garner the investment from these problematic nation states that needs to be done.

[02:45:03]

I mean, you're there are philanthropies in the world, Lauren pal jobs. Right. Funded Concordia Davis Guggenheim Company about a year ago. I mean, the participants still exist, don't they? Are they? But they're not doing so well, basically no longer doing political content. And the problem with participant is that these models are financially based.

[02:45:31]

So participant is finding that, you know, there's not whatever profit to be had and and these models. So I've been told that they're shying away from a lot of this.

[02:45:43]

So I think that, you know, what's gonna happen is or or the perfect world is you have a philanthropist, you know, whether it's someone like a lawn jobs or it's a Jack Dorsey who, you know, who is you know, I feel like how he's handled Twitter and, you know, it's been pretty cool.

[02:46:08]

Yeah. He's certainly pretty enlightened. He's a perfect candidate. I think he would be super interested in this idea. Right, Dorsey or maybe an Elon Musk or, you know, even Bill Gates. That goes, OK, you know what?

[02:46:27]

What am I going to do with all this wealth? What are you going to do with it? You can't once you're worth more than whatever it is, a couple hundred million dollars, what are you going to do with him? He got ten billion dollars. You're making a billion, two billion dollars a year just on the interest on your billions.

[02:46:44]

I mean, you can't spend it. I mean, even like Bill Gates, you say, OK, his mandate is I'm giving away all my well, it doesn't matter how much he gives away every year. His wealth increases, it increases. You're going like, wait, but I thought you were giving it all away. But at the same time, Microsoft just keeps doubling and w w w the guy can't give away enough money fast enough. Yeah.

[02:47:06]

I mean, so, so ultimately I think you look at one of these people or or persons that go, you know, just just as much as I want to give away my wealth to help, you know, fight poverty in Africa or just as much as I want to give away my my wealth to fight, you know, research on vaccines or or irrigation systems or this that the other. Well, I want to give away my wealth to see to it that there is a global platform that is well funded, well financed, well endowed, that you've got that app just like Netflix that you can go to and that there isn't so much of a financial model behind it as there is a philanthropic model behind it to see to it that stories like this get told to me and to, you know, to have have consumers subscribe to it for a couple of bucks, makes it, you know, economically viable.

[02:48:14]

Right, exactly. I mean, if if it's something where, you know, the guy's got to decide, OK, do I pay my fourteen ninety nine for Netflix or do I pay my fourteen ninety nine for whatever it is truth you know. Well that becomes difficult. But if it's a but if it's a you know, if it's a script. And that is, whatever, two ninety nine. And you know that you're going to go on there and you're going to have all sorts of content that otherwise big media companies that are only looking at shareholder accountability, growth in the region, subscriber numbers, risk assessment of all these other things that make it impossible to do that kind of content.

[02:48:56]

And if you have something like that, that can be very, very powerful.

[02:49:01]

All right. So all you billionaires out there listening, give Brian a call.

[02:49:05]

Exactly right. I've thought about this many times, and I do think that that is I do think that this is or will be the future of stories like the dissident, because I don't see these global media companies changing. I mean, even if you look at a company like, let's say, HBO a few years ago, well, now it's, you know, Warner Media and AT&T. I mean, it's it's all interconnected. It's a giant conglomerate.

[02:49:39]

So the so as these conglomerates take hold and, you know, the Amazons of the world, everything becomes a risk, a risk assessment. Yeah.

[02:49:53]

Yeah. It's interesting because the streaming the streaming universe has you do have to credit it with providing the opportunity for a lot of independent stories to be told and shared and celebrated in a way that would not have been possible in the theatrical window model. So it has done, you know, like not as many people would have seen Icarus if it were not for Netflix, of course. So, you know, it's like it's unbelievable the power of these platforms to help, you know, smaller filmmakers and stories that aren't going to get greenlit, you know, to be in the multiplex.

[02:50:32]

And yet, at the same time, there is this risk analysis that is having this squelching impact. What you have is like in the case of Netflix, the the Netflix that did Ikarus three years ago is not the Netflix of today. It's a different company. You know, that was a company that had 100 million subscribers versus two hundred million subscribers.

[02:50:58]

It was a company that was very hungry at that at the time to show that it could be an awards contender, show that it could, you know, evolve beyond, you know, House of Cards. And and it was it was a different company three years ago. And what happens, for better or for worse, because I love Netflix. I mean, the majority of I mean, the Queen's Gambit that I just finished watching is extraordinary. It's extraordinary.

[02:51:35]

And there's so much extraordinary content on there. And I am sure that I will continue to to do content, make content and have content on Netflix. They're awesome and they're amazing what they do. I love them.

[02:51:51]

But on the other hand, because of how big they are and the growth that they've had and where they're at in the world right now, there is a whole other risk model that comes into it. And in many ways, you can't you can't fault them either, because if you're running that company, the burden that comes on top of that, to grow, to have shareholder value and also not put your company at risk also becomes very, very hard.

[02:52:27]

And I don't so I don't have that answer to it, because at the same time, I don't I I'm not I'm not angry at them. I love them. I think they're amazing. And I love what they're doing. And I love the content and and and the form that they've provided for so many people. And what they did for Ikarus was outstanding and astounding. At the same time, there's a conundrum where something gets so big that risk assessment will always get in the way or become, you know, a variable as to whether you do something or not.

[02:53:02]

Yeah, we've got to end this thing. Everybody, please go see this movie. It was very impactful for me, I've seen it twice.

[02:53:15]

I was moved by it made me think it's a heavy film, but it also, like we said at the outset, you know, definitely a thriller. You're on this roller coaster ride as this story unfolds. And you did this with a master stroke like it's it's extraordinary. So congratulations on the movie. It opens December 25th in limited theaters and then January 8th on your VOD platform. Exactly. It'll be available on demand to rent on basically all platforms beginning January 8th.

[02:53:48]

Yeah, check it out. And in theaters December twenty fifth. If you have a theater open near you. Right, you can learn more about it at the dissident dotcom and you can find Brian pretty easily on the Internet. Brian Fogle, right. Yeah. Brian Fogel on Twitter. Instagram I keep private but yeah a few add me. I'll make sure you're not a Saudi troll and I might not know.

[02:54:17]

You know what you should know better than anyone. It's funny. I mean, I keep my accounts private because I very rarely I don't have a lot of time for it, but then I'll click and and I go way or this looks like a honeypot or something, you know, I click and it's like, oh, you must be everything that comes in.

[02:54:34]

You must think, do I really want to click on like I'm like, this doesn't look like a real person, you know, or. Yeah. Or something like that. And I'm like, yeah, there's something right here.

[02:54:48]

What are we going to do, go right our bikes. Let's go ride bikes. Got a ski, go ride bikes. Cool. Because that's what we do for sure.

[02:54:57]

Thank you man. That was super powerful. So much respect for putting yourself out there in a really powerful way to force positive change. It's it's it's an example for me and how I think about how I interface with the world and I know for so many people out there. So I appreciate you, my friend. Thanks, Rich.

[02:55:15]

It's good to be back on and talking to you again and cool. You're amazing. And any of you haven't seen Ritchie's new book. You have to get it. It's incredible. It's on my coffee table. Yeah, because you're in it and is in it.

[02:55:30]

Yeah. Cool. Thank you.

[02:55:33]

Piece. He's sobering, right? Courageous that Brian. Super courageous.

[02:55:41]

Please make a point of checking out the dissident streaming VOD on most platforms starting January 8th.

[02:55:48]

Give Brian a high five on the social's app, Ryan Fogle on Twitter and Instagram and be sure to check out the show notes on the episode page. Rich Roll Dotcom. We have links up there to everything that we discussed and explore today. If you'd like to support our work here on the show, the single most impactful thing you can do is to just subscribe to the show on Apple podcast, Spotify and YouTube. It will only take you a very brief moment and it does help us out a lot.

[02:56:14]

I love it when you share the show or your favorite episodes with friends on social media platforms. And how about Analog five too? And you can support us on patriae on Aboriginal dot com slash donate Today show was produced and engineered, as always, by Jason Carmello.

[02:56:28]

The video edition of the show was created by Blake Curtis, graphics by Jessica Myranda, portraits by Ali Rogers sponsored Relationships are managed by Dick David Kahn and theme music by Tyler Trapper and Hari.

[02:56:41]

My boys appreciate the love you guys. See you back here in a couple of days with a beautiful, beautiful conversation with my new best friend, Queer Eyes, Chromeo Brown. So good.

[02:56:55]

Until then, speak your truth. Peace plans.