‘Icarus’ Trailer: Here’s What Happens When You Get Way Too Deep Into Your Documentary

Don’t you hate it when your documentary about sports doping gets scooped right before a big Olympics? That’s exactly what happened to Bryan Fogel, who started out making Icarus before the news of the Russian team’s doping habits surfaced at last year’s Rio Olympics. Far from letting his new documentary slide into the ether, Fogel decided to go further into the conspiracy, immersing himself in the secretive world of Russian sports doping.

Icarus was one of Sundance’s most audacious documentaries and was snatched up by Netflix soon after it premiered this year. It’ll hit the streaming service next month.

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.

Icarus hits Netflix August 4.