Elizabeth Holmes documentary: 3 stunning hours thrill NYFF
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” screened Wednesday, Sept. 30, at the New York Film Festival, where a packed crowd at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall reacted loudly to the film’s twists. NYFF programming chief Dennis Lim introduced the three-hour A24 release by pointing to the one-minute teaser that set the internet buzzing, telling the audience, “This is three hours of that,” The Hollywood Reporter reported.
The Hollywood Reporter said about 1,100 people packed the hall, with dozens more waiting in standby lines outside.
Why Fielder took on the Elizabeth Holmes documentary
The pairing seemed unlikely. Fielder said Holmes did not appear to know his work beforehand, and in the film he asks her, “Why me?”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, A24 brought Fielder the idea after its executives met with Holmes. He shot for months without knowing whether a film would come of it, and the studio offered him a way out at any point if he decided there wasn’t enough material.
“I didn’t see a documentary project in her because I thought the story was very well-told,” Fielder told the NYFF audience.
He also asked viewers to keep the film’s surprises to themselves. “We really want audiences to have the experience we had,” Fielder said. “So if you can preserve the discovery that would be great.”
Filmmakers describe ‘cognitive dissonance’
Oppenheim told the crowd that “everyone going through the movie had similar moments of cognitive dissonance.” Fielder said he is “still struggling to this day to understand what I went through.”
Describing his time with the convicted Theranos founder, Fielder said, “I had this weird experience where she seemed so genuine at times, but also clocking — tracking my thoughts — that she’s a liar.” Lim, a film studies professor who once taught Oppenheim, suggested the movie has enough layers of meta-reality that it could one day be taught in documentary classes, The Hollywood Reporter noted.
After the Holmes documentary ended, A24 staffers handed departing filmgoers promotional buttons that read “I’ve Seen Everything.”
Elizabeth Holmes documentary release date
“You Can See Everything” premiered as a secret screening at the Telluride Film Festival before its NYFF Spotlight slot. The Elizabeth Holmes documentary opens in theaters Oct. 16, according to The Film Stage. The 64th New York Film Festival runs through Oct. 12.
Holmes gave the filmmakers broad access to her San Diego home in 2023, in the days before she reported to federal prison after being convicted of defrauding investors, Deadline reported. In his Deadline review, Pete Hammond wrote that Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, agreed to be “miced-up for at least 12 hours a day,” with wide-angle cameras capturing their movements.
Who made the Holmes documentary
Fielder is best known for Comedy Central’s “Nathan for You” and HBO’s “The Rehearsal.” He also co-created Showtime’s “The Curse,” which in 2023 became the first TV series to premiere at NYFF. Oppenheim directed the documentary “Some Kind of Heaven” and the HBO docuseries “Ren Faire.”
Holmes founded the blood-testing startup Theranos. A federal jury convicted her in January 2022 on four fraud-related counts, and she reported to a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, on May 30, 2023, to begin a sentence of more than 11 years, KBTX reported.
The documentary joins a busy fall for festival titles, including Andrew Scott’s “Elsinore,” which also played Telluride. For more nonfiction on the way, see Netflix’s Matthew Perry documentary and A24’s British series deal with Paramount+.
Reporting from The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline and Film at Lincoln Center contributed to this story.