When “The Dissident” director Bryan Fogel came to Istanbul around two months after the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi to meet and film his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, she was still in shock from his death. Though she was sick and didn’t know it at the time, Cengiz says telling his story helped her recover.
“I was in shock in that time. I was really, really sick, and I was sleeping at home, and he took me to life again. I didn’t know in that time he was helping me, but I can say he helped me a lot,” Cengiz told TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman at Sundance. “A year after the murder, we are talking about 15 months now, I wake up every day with Jamal’s face. It’s not changed in my life.”
Fogel, the Oscar-winning director behind the documentary “Icarus,” joined Cengiz in Sundance to discuss what life has been like for her since Khashoggi’s death. Fogel obtained access to all of the Turkish government’s evidence into Khashoggi’s murder, and he spoke with Cengiz and numerous other dissidents all working to uncover clues about the nature of his death and the government cover-up that surrounded it.
Cengiz has now moved to London to learn English in the hopes of carrying on Khashoggi’s legacy, but she acknowledges that the experience has forever changed her.
‘When I sleep, and every day at night, I remember Jamal’s face, Jamal’s life and Jamal’s story, and I’m waking up sometimes in midnight with very interesting nightmares. I’m living in this story everyday,” she said. “I’m still a simple person as a woman, I’m a researcher and I have a family, but who killed Jamal, they made me a fighter.
Watch the video featuring Cengiz above.