The saga of tech founder Elizabeth Holmes is one of the strangest downfalls of recent decades. The self-made billionaire, who built her fortune through fraudulent medical tests, is in prison serving an 11-year sentence, but before she was jailed she invited filmmaker Nathan Fielder to document her final days of freedom.
News has been pouring in about the film, titled “You Can See It All,” since its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on September 6. Two trailers followed, revealing an unrepentant, wide-eyed and emotional Holmes, claiming she had done nothing wrong.
At a screening of the film at the New York Film Festival on Wednesday, co-directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim revealed more details about their experience with Holmes during a Q&A, as Variety reports.
Turns out it was Holmes who contacted film distributor A24 to make the documentary. After reading journalist John Carreyrou’s expose, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” Fielder became interested in Holmes’ topic and, through A24, arranged a meeting.
“When I met her, I remember having this weird experience where she seems so genuine sometimes,” Fielder said during the Q&A session. “But then I’m like, ‘No,’ and I measure and track my thoughts and I’m like, ‘Okay, I know she’s a liar.'”
Fielder and Oppenheim were invited to live in Holmes’ house for the 34 days before she went to a Texas women’s prison in 2023. They noted that, throughout filming, they would have different interpretations of even “seemingly mundane moments”, a dissonance that made them think they had an interesting film on their hands (A24 had offered them the option to end the project if they thought otherwise).
Oppenheim compared the experience to the 1979 Soviet film “Stalker,” about a mythical zone where the laws of physics are irrelevant and people’s deepest desires are fulfilled. The film notably inspired Burning Man.
“The laws of reality and everything we thought was happening outside just evaporated, and no one could agree,” Oppenheim said.
According to Vanity Fair, Holmes’ fiancé Billy Evans ends up being a villain in the film and attempts to exert control over it towards the end of filming. Communication with him “broke off” after that, Fielder said. Evans would not have seen the film.
After the screening, Vanity Fair reported a truck parked outside Lincoln Center with an LED screen emblazoned with the text “Free Elizabeth Holmes.” This was linked to an online campaign on justblood.com, which maintains Holmes’ innocence and claims his testing technology is functional.
“You Can See Everything” is scheduled to hit theaters on October 16.
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