Entertainment

Here's Where To Stream The Doc About Russia's Olympic Doping Scandal That Just Won An Oscar

Netflix

Thanks to streaming platforms, documentaries both long and short have become a lot more accessible to the public. Now that the votes have been tallied, here's where to stream the Oscar-winning documentary Icarus. It turns out you won't have to wait long to find out why it won the year's highest honor, as the doc is available on Netflix to stream right away.

A few of the other nominated documentaries are also available on Netflix, including Last Men In Aleppo and Strong Island. Meanwhile, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is available to rent on various platforms, and is also streaming on PBS. To catch Faces Places, check your local art house cinema, as it's still showing in some areas; if you'd rather catch it at home, it's available to purchase on YouTube, iTunes, and Google Play. So really, you could plan quite the documentary marathon. Every nominee is streamable with little to no effort.

As for the winner, Icarus is particularly prescient in 2018, but not for the reason you may expect. Remember how Russian athletes were collectively banned from competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics, and then individually let back in under the the title "Olympic Athletes From Russia" and a neutral flag? That's what this movie is about, and so much more. This is the official description of Icarus from Netflix:

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.

Thrilling! Here's the trailer.

"We hope Icarus is a wake up call," Fogel said in his acceptance speech, dedicating the award to the whistleblower, whose life is now in danger. "Yes about Russia," he added, "but in the importance of telling the truth, now more than ever."

In the documentary, Fogel actually takes performance enhancing drugs as an experiment. "It was a little ludicrous," he said in an interview with NPR. "But for what I was doing, which was, you know, going on this very, very detailed mission of charting what I was taking and then getting blood tests done every single week and collecting my urine and, you know, there was a very, very large extent to which I was going. But, you know, I was out to make a film. And I was documenting that process. So to that extent, I mean, there was a method and a purpose to the madness."

He also learns how to beat doping tests, as if uncovering mysterious deaths were not enough to keep you glued to the screen. It's wild, and you kind of have to stream it to believe it. Luckily, you can watch Icarus on Netflix as soon as the Academy Awards are over.

Full disclosure: Icarus producer David Fialkow is a Bustle investor.