Vladimir Putin demands absolute fealty to the Russian state, and woe to anyone who defies him.
Oil executive Ravil Maganov, whose company had criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine, took a fatal nosedive earlier this week from the window of a Moscow hospital, in what – charitably – has been termed mysterious circumstancesWas Maganov’s name engraved on a Kremlin enemies list? Maybe so, maybe not. But one man who can be certain the Kremlin would like him dead is the Russian chemist Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, who used to run his nation’s athletics anti-doping laboratory. As documented in the 2018 Oscar-winning film Icarus, Rodchenkov blew the whistle on Russia’s elaborate scheme to cheat on drug tests before Olympic and other world sporting competitions, a devious system that the chemist himself had implemented
Director Bryan FogelMichael Buckner/Deadline/Shutterstock
Rodchenkov fled to the United States and went into hiding in the midst of making the documentary directed by Bryan Fogel. But what has happened to him since? The new documentary Icarus: The Aftermath answers that question. Fogel’s follow up premiered Friday night at the Telluride Film Festival.
“We’ve kept the film very tightly under wraps for the last four and a half years that we were working on it, really, which began almost immediately after Icarus was released,” Fogel tells Deadline. “We kept it under wraps largely due to security concerns.”
The film reveals Rodchenkov has been living like a hunted man, forced to relocate frequently within the U.S., lest potential Russian assassins track him down. He left his family behind in Russia, yet doesn’t regret exposing his country’s doping perfidy. Rodchenkov remains a staunch critic of the way his homeland is being run.
“The problem of Russia is no one can tell the truth. This is still Soviet attitude,” he says in the documentary. “In Russia, history is falsified. I’m against systematic lying.Fogel could communicate with Rodchenkov periodically over the internet, and see him in person, but only on rare occasions (each visit carried the risk of exposing his location). Capturing Rodchenkov’s life day to day became the responsibility of cinematographer Jake Swantko, who describes it as “sort of like this embed process.” Swantko came away impressed with Rodchenkov’s capacity to maintain a positive outlook. “Grigory is one of these types of people who takes any sort of situation and finds the light in it. I know that’s a bit of a cliche, but I’ve never met somebody more optimistic,” he says. “Even under tremendous pressure — not seeing his family for as long as he has and not knowing where he’s going to be living the next day or where money’s coming from — he is a beacon of optimism… He is just a great testament to a spirit that can be undeterred.”