Netflix’s award-winning documentary Icarus has just released an official trailer and poster. The documentary had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: The Orwell Award, and was sought after by multiple studios. Netflix won out, obtaining the film for $5 million.
Commenting on the acquisition by Netflix, director Bryan Fogel stated, “This has been an intense 3.5-year personal journey that exposed the biggest scandal in sports history. To be able to work with Netflix, a company that is able to launch this story globally in such a big way, with such potential for social and political impact, is a spectacular honor.”
Netflix is planning to premiere Icarus on August 4, 2017.
The Plot: In the audacious documentary Icarus, director Bryan Fogel’s bold gambit was this: to investigate doping in sports, Fogel (an amateur bike racer) would dope himself, observe the changes in his performance, and see if he could evade detection. In doing so, he was connected to a renegade Russian scientist, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, a pillar of his country’s “anti-doping” program. Over dozens of Skype calls, urine samples, and badly administered hormone injections, Fogel and Rodchenkov grow closer despite shocking allegations that place Rodchenkov at the center of Russia’s state-sponsored Olympic doping program.
When the truth is more complex than imagined, and accusations of illegalities run to Russia’s highest chains of command, the two realize they hold the power to reveal the biggest international sports scandal in living memory. Exemplifying the special bond between filmmaker and subject, this is a vital portrait of the sacrifice some people will make to stand up for truth. Icarus places you at the heart of an international game of cat and mouse, where a miscalculation can cost you your life.
