Jake Swantko, DP and producer of The Dissident, on working with director Bryan Fogel and shooting the controversial documentary

Cinematographer Jake Swantko spoke with us last year at the
Sundance Film Festival after the premiere of The Dissident, the
documentary he shot with director Bryan Fogel. Jake and Bryan had
previously collaborated on the Oscar-winning film, Icarus. The
Dissident explores the assassination and international coverup of
outspoken Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Once director
Bryan Fogel learned more about the circumstances surrounding the
death of Khashoggi, he knew this was another important- and
dangerous- subject to film for his next documentary. Bryan took the
idea to Jake, who also worked as a producer on the film, and they
began the grueling process, traveling to Canada and Turkey multiple
times to interview Khashoggi's close friend and Saudi insurgent
Omar Abdulaziz, speaking to Khashoggi's fiancée Hatice Cengiz,
spending a year digging into the case and meeting with the Turkish
government. The Dissident team knew they had to have the
cooperation of Turkey to shoot the story, since Khashoggi was
murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and they eventually
scored an interview with Irfan Fidan, the chief prosecutor in
Istanbul who investigated the murder. Since The Dissident was so
huge in scope, Jake knew he wanted to elevate the production value
of the film and shot it like a dark thriller. He set up most
interviews formally instead of run-and-gun style, with three
cameras and one on dolly track to push in on the subject's face.
Despite being well received at Sundance, The Dissident struggled to
find a distributor, even from Netflix, who had championed Icarus.
Amazon Prime also would not buy the film, despite Jeff Bezos
briefly being in The Dissident- Jamal Kashoggi wrote for his
newspaper, The Washington Post and Bezos' phone was hacked by Saudi
Arabian government hackers. It seems the streaming services feared
retaliation by the Saudi government and didn't want to risk losing
viewers in that market. Briarcliff Entertainment finally championed
The Dissident, and it is currently available on VOD. The Dissident
is available to stream now on video on demand services.
https://thedissident.com/ You can hear our past interview with Jake
Swantko in 2018 talking to us about the Oscar winning documentary,
Icarus. https://www.camnoir.com/special-swantko/ Find Jake Swantko:
https://www.jakeswantko.com/ Instagram @swantko IT'S A GIVEAWAY!
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