Marc Fogel documentary screened at Penn Theater
While Marc Fogel, a Butler native and international teacher, spent his 1,076th night in a Russian prison, dozens — including 52 of his cousins — packed into the Penn Theater on Thursday, July 25, to discuss how to advocate for his release and watch a documentary that could spread awareness about his case.
The Butler screening of “Did You Forget Mr. Fogel?” comes after student filmmakers Max Karpman, Kaylee Smith, Seth Karall and Francesca Hill from Chapman University in Orange County, Calif., showed their film to an audience in Washington D.C.
The 15-minute film details the toll of his imprisonment on his family and highlights how the 63-year-old has yet to be designated as wrongfully detained by the Department of State despite being arrested under the same statutes as basketball player Brittney Griner, who was released after 10 months in captivity.
The film features interviews with Marc’s 95-year-old mother, Malphine, his niece and nephew, sisters Anne Fogel and Lisa Hyland, and former students as well as former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and family attorney Sasha Phillips.
In creating the project, Karpman and the rest of the film crew had about 60-70 calls with family members, friends, neighbors and former students of Marc’s, he said. The project began in August 2023 and is being reviewed by a number of film festivals before it can be publicly released.
Thursday evening, Malphine Fogel introduced the documentary, and Karpman spoke about his experience creating the film with Alter Eagle podcast host Laura Crago, who facilitated questions.
“The purpose was to make anyone that watched it cry, feel emotional, at least extremely impassioned, to act, to do something,” Karpman said. “This is the third screening, and screenings we’ve had so far, that has been the reaction.”
“For groups of people that don’t know Marc, that’s the whole point,” he said. “We want them to be upset and heartbroken, the way all of you are.”
The student filmmakers stayed in the Pittsburgh area for a week to shoot footage for the film, Karpman said. They filmed inside Malphine Fogel’s home in Butler Township and Marc’s childhood bedroom, and documented stories of who Marc was as a teacher, brother and son.
“Just being so close to such a tragedy and true heartbreak, it really moved us,” he said.
The last interview filmed was of Marc’s sister, Anne. The filmmakers didn’t speak to each other for 30 minutes afterward because of how moving it was, Karpman said.
“It was indescribable,” Karpman said. “There were so many emotions, which is why for 30 minutes, the five of us could not say a word to each other ... it was after that interview that we truly, truly understood this heartbreak.”
“I can only imagine if that was my dad in there, or my sister, or my brother, how I would feel about speaking about that kind of thing directly to the camera — it’s not an easy thing,” Karpman said.
“Everybody we interviewed really, really gave it their all, and that’s why it not only had a profound effect on you guys, but for us editing it for six months, looking at that footage every day,” he said.
Karpman, who was born in New Jersey, lived in Moscow with his parents from the ages of 3 to 13 and attended the Anglo-American School of Moscow for several years, the same international school where Marc taught history before his arrest at an airport in August 2021.
Marc’s wife, Jane, was Karpman’s seventh grade science teacher. Marc taught his older sister, Masha, Karpman said in a previous interview.
Marc taught in international schools around the world and was in his final year of teaching at the Anglo-American School of Moscow when he was arrested at Sheremetyevo Airport for possessing less than an ounce of medical marijuana and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Phillips, the family’s attorney, noted Marc was set up by a confidential informant, and the school was a target of the Russian government for years. Thirty teachers, including Marc and his wife, had their diplomatic visas revoked before Marc’s arrest. The institution, which taught the children of diplomats around the world, is now closed.
“As a lawyer, I had a few people come up to me, or I just saw these comments on social media that say, ‘Well, you should have known better,’” she said.
“If you are a Russian citizen, you’re likely to get maybe up to three years probation, if you really tick the officers off,” Phillips said. “Chances are you get a couple of months probation.”
“He got that sentence because he’s an American,” she said. “And unless we get him out, this could become a death sentence. We don’t want that.”
At the end of the evening, Phillips led attendees in a pledge with Karpman, spokesman Vicki Iseman, and Lori Falce, community engagement editor at the Tribune-Review, as well as with Tom and Deb Zarnick, who help facilitate the Free Marc Fogel Facebook page.
Phillips asked them all to place their right hands over their hearts and repeat a promise:
“I will do everything I can to bring Marc Fogel home.”
This story has been updated at 1:27 p.m., July 26 to reflect that Marc Fogel has spent 1,076 nights behind bars as of July 25. A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that Fogel had spent 1,040 nights behind bars.
