Icarus is the Netflix documentary about Russian doping that won the 2018 documentary Oscar. Directed by Bryan Fogel, the 2017 film began as a personal experiment in performance-enhancing drugs but expanded into an investigation of an international doping system.
Fogel initially wanted to test whether an amateur cyclist could evade anti-doping controls. He sought advice from Grigory Rodchenkov, then head of Moscow's anti-doping laboratory. As the project developed, Rodchenkov became a whistleblower and described the alleged manipulation of testing connected to Russia's state-supported sports program and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Netflix acquired the film after its premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and released it globally on August 4, 2017. At the 90th Academy Awards on March 4, 2018, Icarus won Best Documentary Feature for Fogel and producer Dan Cogan. The title is sometimes confused with later sports documentaries such as Athlete A, but those films did not win this Oscar.