The Big Picture · Interview

'Icarus' Filmmaker Bryan Fogel on Why Russia Won't Be at the Olympics

February 9, 2018/ 39 min/ Sean Fennessey

On the eve of the Pyeongchang Games, Sean Fennessey talks to Oscar-nominated 'Icarus' director Bryan Fogel: how a self-doping stunt turned into whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov and the Russian state-doping scandal, why he thinks the problem is unsolvable, and his complicated read on Lance Armstrong.

2 films across 1 segment.

AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.

In conversation

Bryan Fogel on

Icarus 2017

Fogel set out to dope himself and beat the anti-doping system on camera; the film became the story of Grigory Rodchenkov, the Russian lab director who helped him and then defected to expose state-sponsored doping. Fogel started shooting in April 2014, the film premiered at Sundance a year before this interview, and Netflix acquired and finished it. It's up for Best Documentary at the 90th Oscars, and Fogel credits it with pressure that helped ban Russia from the 2018 Games.

Bryan Fogel on

The Shape of Water 2017

His pick for the last great film he's seen, watched about a week earlier. He says he cried, and admits that on paper a woman falling for a 'manfish' should be preposterous, but del Toro's cinematography and set design won him over.

Also mentioned raised along the way

In passing Strong Island

Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads

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