Icarus, Uncovering a Scandal of Olympic Proportions

Documentary filmmaker and avid cyclist Bryan Fogel was inspired by Lance Armstrong’s notorious fall from grace to explore firsthand the world of doping inside professional cycling. His experiment soon became a three-year investigation that uncovered one of the biggest sports scandals in history: Russia’s decades-long state-sponsored doping program. In this discussion, he describes the making of his award-winning documentary Icarus with producers Dan Cogan and David Fialkow, and the power of documentaries to inform our thinking about pressing issues.

Cogan on the future of documentary films: “What you’re seeing is the competition among these giant worldwide companies for the living room and entertainment in the living room. And what you’re seeing in [subscription VOD] is what is raising the platform of independent movies and documentary films.”