The Dissident – An Intense Yet Important Documentary (Early Review)

Everyone has surely heard about the saga behind Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi who disappeared after entering the Saudi Arabia embassy in Istanbul, Turkey. What we know now to be a murder of Khashoggi by the hands of Saudi government was just the tip of the iceberg as far as the impact Saudi Arabia and its ruling monarchy have had on the world stage and as a power in the Middle East. Premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, The Dissident is the latest documentary that attempts to shed a light on said coverup and its many implications that continue to be felt today in a way that feels like a gripping thriller with moments of palpable intensity that rival recent feature films. While the film may not be an easy watch at times due to the subject matter and while we may never really know the truth about what happened to Khashoggi in that embassy, it is still an important watch nonetheless.

The Dissident may have Khashoggi at its center but the film was more about a movement that started before him and will continue after him as well as the subsequent attempts to silence that movement. Free speech has been a rarity within much of the Middle East as its respective mostly authoritarian regimes have routinely suppressed it as a means to control its people. Nevertheless, voices continue to emerge in an attempt to spread the word on what is happening to keep their respective governments in check, Despite those voices facing severe repercussions for their actions, they continue to persist. One of those voices was of course Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist who had since become a major outspoken critic of the Saudi regime and Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and the country’s king, Salman after fleeing Saudi Arabia in September 2017. His growing following only made him more of a threat to the Saudi regime hence his alleged assassination at the hands of bin Salman and his cronies. Whether or not the evidence strongly suggested this to be the case, we may never get closure.

While the Saudis’ power and influence was widespread and seemingly insurmountable, they still faced plenty of opposition but the lengths in which they have gone to silence that opposition have been questionable and downright scary at times. Meanwhile, their attempts to manipulate people in power were just as crazy. As the film tried to humanize Khashoggi by letting the audience learn more about the person he was, it laid out its case against the Saudis in a compelling way involving the people from Khashoggi’s life and the investigators working his case. Watching as they discuss the case with a surprising amount of detail could admittedly be rough times, especially once it got to the transcript of the audio tape of Khashoggi’s alleged murder. However, there were other prominent parts of the story as his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, looked for justice (the reason why he entered the embassy was to obtain paperwork so he could marry her) and a Saudi activist and exiled dissident linked to Khashoggi named Omar Abdulaziz living in Montreal, Canada under the protection of the Canadian government. The latter’s story and the Saudi government’s attempts to silent him was truly heartbreaking.

The Dissident at times may try a little too hard in terms of its flashiness, be it by music, quick cutting, or animated sequences, perhaps tapping into that side of things a few too many times but it felt like the best way to convey the film’s subject matter. In the end, the film was about the power of journalism and the fight to preserve it.

The Dissident is a celebration of free speech and how the world is in need of more voices like Khashoggi’s.

still courtesy of Sundance

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.