On October 2, 2018, outspoken Saudi Arabian expatriate and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul seeking documents related to his upcoming marriage. He never left.
In the new documentary The Dissident, producer-DP Jake Swantko and writer-director-producer Bryan Fogel tell the grisly and alarming story of Khashoggi’s assassination and its aftermath. Shooting in Montreal, Istanbul and Washington, D.C., the filmmakers shadow his fiancée Hatice Cengiz and fellow Saudi expatriate Omar Abdulaziz, uncovering evidence of cyber-intelligence operations and revealing the details of Khashoggi’s final minutes in chilling interviews with the Turkish police and prosecutors who investigated his murder. The Dissident implicates the Saudi government in Khashoggi’s death and indicts the global community for its failure to react.
“Khashoggi’s murder had global impact and there was an untold story behind the story,” notes Fogel. “From the start, I wanted this film to be about truth. Despite the confusion and obscurity of those early days of the media frenzy around it—the competing narratives, the official statements from governments that have their own agendas, the outright lies—there is a true story, and there is power in uncovering it.”
It’s a step up in ambition for Swantko and Fogel, who accidentally exposed an international doping conspiracy while working on a personal, Super Size Me-like project that turned into the Oscar®-winning documentary Icarus. “I think about those times seven years ago, unloading the car for Icarus and shooting with a handycam,” recalls Swantko. “And then the last shot for The Dissident was in the Turkish presidential palace with three RED cameras and a 15-person crew. Bryan and I would look at each other and crack up. It’s been a wild and weird ride.”
Swantko earned a degree in journalism and communication from the University of Oregon that he says taught him how to work in risky environments with wary sources. “Every story brings with it new and interesting challenges, but at the heart of it is the interpersonal relationship you develop with people who have extraordinary stories,” he says. “You’re asking for the ability to be in the room when something extraordinary is happening. And after all the time and effort to get in there, when you see it on a 50-foot screen, it’s exciting and beautiful.”
After consulting with Panavision in New York, Swantko and Fogel decided two RED WEAPON EPIC 6K cameras and a set of Panavision Primo SL Series T1.9 prime lenses would deliver a cinematic look without breaking their documentary budget. In Istanbul, the team rented RED DSMC2 HELIUM cameras to avoid carrying equipment across the Atlantic. Shooting 6K REDCODE RAW at 8:1 compression for a final 4K output gave Swantko the quality and confidence he needed to work quickly.
Swantko used the RED cameras and Primo lenses wherever practical. “We really enjoyed using those cameras, and I’m planning on using RED again,” Swantko admits. “I was really happy with the dynamic range and the Panavision Primos were an amazing asset. We weren’t always working to make the image look beautiful. Even if the camera just fell off the truck, the image would still look pretty damn good.”
Swantko’s camera set-ups ranged from early, intimate scenes with Abdulaziz in his hotel room to interviews with a dozen or more crew on hand wrangling three cameras, including one on a dolly. In between were verité-style scenes requiring a four-person crew, including a Steadicam operator and a second verité operator shooting with a 50mm lens for added coverage. Getting multiple angles on important subjects meant less chance of missing unexpected developments.
“It’s difficult to gauge how important certain moments are, so you need to keep the physical shooting from getting in the way of the story,” he reflects. “You can’t have an eight-person crew in a hotel room, so you operate as a one-man band, and it’s just raw and real.”
Shooting RAW meant Swantko could get usable images under difficult conditions and try to get everything in-camera without relying on the digital intermediate too much. “If we were underexposed a couple of stops because we couldn’t control the lighting, it was OK because I knew I could pull it out (in post),” he explains. “It’s important not to mess with the lighting and let the scene happen.”
Swantko also indulged an impressionistic streak, capturing isolated shots with almost kaleidoscopic distortions. No VFX plug-ins here—the effects are in-camera. “I’m a huge fan of Jeremy Mann, an abstract artist who paints cityscapes,” he says. “I wanted to create atmospheric establishing shots with a feeling of disorientation. At each location, I would break a wine glass or a brandy glass and put pieces of glass in front of the lens to smear the picture and create this almost diopter effect, where parts of the glass refract and create a prism in certain areas.” Only when the film segments had been finished by editorial did he realize all of these experimental shots made it into the film, underscoring the story’s eerie, through-the-looking-glass quality.
Given the gravity of the material, was Swantko ever in personal danger? He says he gets that question a lot. “There’s danger with it,” he acknowledges. “That’s part of working with people who say that things are controversial and consequential. During our time working with Omar, intel was coming in from the Canadians that his life was at risk. There’s not a lot you can do about that. I want to tell the story, so I want to work with the guy. If my personal safety is at risk, I’m OK with that. I’ve always wanted to work with people who are on the fringes of society and have incredibly important things to say—to be around people with tremendous courage. Hopefully, some of that rubs off on me as a person.”
“Khashoggi showed us that individuals can be powerful, and even dangerous, to the corrupting powers of the world,” Fogel concludes. “I hope that when people see The Dissident, they will feel a personal responsibility to act.”
