Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

The Dissident is a stunningly illuminating documentary that is by turns horrifying and dispiriting. You should watch it!

There is so much in this movie that should be common knowledge but isn’t, it’s shocking. But then, even though this is about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashaggi at the direction of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salmad (frequently referred to as “MBS”), we’re still talking about a country given unwarranted deference by the U.S. for decades, no matter how heinous their acts. This is the country most of the 9/11 terrorists came from, after all—a detail the film doesn’t even bother to note. President Donald Trump is given relatively little focus in this telling of the story, but then, director Bryan Fogel smartly focuses on arguably the most salient point there: Trump consistently took MBS’s word for it that he had nothing to do with Khashaggi’s assassination, and after Congress passed bipartisan legislation to stop sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Trump vetoed it.

But there is a lot more to this story, much of the focus of which is on video blogger Omar Abdulaziz, now living as a refugee in Montreal. Over a dozen of his friends and at least two of his brothers have been arrested in Saudia Arabia and to this day are being held with no formal charges filed against them. In between interview clips of Abdulaziz telling his story, Fogel’s camera follow him walking around the city, intercut with beautiful drone shots of the Montreal skyline. This film has an unusual mind for aesthetic quality, with a couple CGI animations thrown in with sleek designs of their own.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from The Dissident is the level of power Saudi Arabia has over the same kind of “internet troll armies” now commonly associated with Russia. Russia is far from the only country in this business, and here the hundreds of Saudi government employees, each hired to create fifteen to twenty Twitter accounts and then flood any criticism of their government with pro-Saudi messaging and hashtags to drown them out, are referred to as “flies.” Abdulaziz gained the assistance of Khashaggi, himself living abroad from Saudia Arabia after criticizing the country’s leadership in his journalism, to counter these “flies,” with what they called “Army of the Bees.” This was a very organized, activist effort to counter the Saudia propaganda, which ultimately got their freedom-of-speech messaging an hashtags at the top of trending topics in the country.

This is precisely what threatened the Saudi government, and Khashaggi was targeted after being identified via Saudi hacking of Abdulaziz’s phone. Abdulaziz, a much younger man at the age of 27, clearly feels very guilty and responsible. It could be said that he is the greatest living connection to Khashaggi’s legacy, though, so the film’s large focus on him makes sense.

All of this ultimately functions as backstory to the gruesome assassination itself, of which an astounding amount of details are known, thanks to there being audio recordings of it. The entire story is astonishing, not least of which because the killing occurred in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The recordings are something else, though, and although this film thankfully doesn’t feature any of it, it does throw text from complete transcripts on the screen. We’re talking about a man, a clearly decent man whose greatest goal was to give voice to the voiceless—he even says in one interview clip that he’s not even asking for democracy, just “the bare minimum” of allowing people to say what they think—who was killed by suffocation and then cut up with a bone saw. Transcripts reveal casual conversation between the killers as they perform the task.

There are some odd interviews with local Turkish law enforcement. One man in particular is shown twice noting that the killers were just hired goons who were “following orders.” What an odd throwback to the same kind of apologies made for Nazi guards in German concentration camps.

The Dissident certainly offers some insight into how Middle Eastern governments managed to suppress the freedoms and hopes borne of the so-called “Arab Spring” of the early 2010s: organized propaganda and systematic elimination of dissent. Saudi Arabia uses the same social media tools against those initial revolutionaries, with their own hundreds of hired goons, creating bogus accounts and tweets to create a false narrative that outshines and outpaces those of the activists. It’s curious how the conversation in the United States focuses so heavily on Russia, at the expense of other powerful countries doing the same thing. Imagine how many other governments are doing things like this and we just have no idea.

I’m not sure how many I could truly convince to watch The Dissident, but it really should be seen. This touches on much of what the much-discussed Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma covers, but with far greater finesse, real-world potential for global consequence, and narrative force. This is the film with a more effective illustration of the urgency we have of doing something about cybersecurity. And that’s not even the point of the flm; Bryan Fogel just set out to tell Jamal Khashaggi’s story. It’s a story worth telling and hearing, with widespread implications.

Overall: A-