He enters the documentary as an earthy, savvy rogue who gleefully assists filmmaker and amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel in a performance-enhancing experiment.

'Icarus' provides the first three-dimensional glimpse of the person behind the revelations. Russian officials have denounced him and dismissed his claims. In a May 2016 story in The New York Times, Rodchenkov described sample tampering, government and secret police involvement and drug-masking methods used to rig the Sochi 2014 Winter Games. The former Moscow laboratory director has figured prominently in voluminous World Anti-Doping Agency-commissioned investigative reports over the past two years. Netflix, which paid $5 million to acquire the film (to be released Friday by the streaming service), is banking on that. Whether or not audiences find Rodchenkov sympathetic, they might well find him fascinating. Evidence he carried with him when he fled to the United States in late 2015 exposed the comingled interests of his country's political leaders and its sports establishment - a symbiotic relationship that went underground rather than ending with the breakup of the Soviet Union. Rodchenkov is the brilliant, irreverent Russian scientist who first helped facilitate organized doping in his country, then called foul on it.

Department of Justice, which believes there might be a credible threat to his life. He is currently under the protective custody of the U.S. Leading man Grigory Rodchenkov was unable to attend. 'Icarus,' a documentary that deepens understanding of how easily the global anti-doping system was gamed, was the opening-night feature of the American Film Institute's AFI DOCS festival in June.

Icarus documentary