Wednesday at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, Nathan Fielder, co-director of the Elizabeth Holmes documentary You can see everythingfound himself, for the first time, in conversation with a group of other directors of the best documentaries of 2026. And the unconventionality and enormous box office reception of his and Lance Oppenheim’s film was a hot topic of discussion.
Fielder was part of the festival The Hollywood Reporter-hosted the Docs to Watch panel – the full video of which will be released soon, but whose corresponding clip appears below – and was seated alongside nine other doc filmmakers: Chai Vasarhelyi (Everest: the other side), Rory Kennedy (The Trial of Alec Baldwin), Amir Bar-Lev (The latest premiere: Winter K2), Julia Loktev (My Unwanted Friends: Part II – Exile), David Greaves (Once upon a time in Harlem), Poh Si Teng (American doctor), Jack MacInnes (One in a million), Alysa Nahmias (Cookie queens) and Ron Howard (Avedon).
The moderator – yours truly – pointed out that the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which only determines the best feature-length documentaries nominated for Oscars, has become controversial in recent years. The industry has systematically ignored material featuring celebrities and/or enjoying wide circulations and/or making money, almost punishing popularity – examples include Don’t you want to be my neighbor, Jane, Life itself, Still Photo: A Michael J. Fox Film, American Symphony, Will and Harper And Billie Eilish: The world is a little blurry. And the industry has also shown itself to be very reluctant to documentaries presenting somewhat adventurous filmmaking techniques, including reconstructions… Stories we tell being a recent example.
At a time when this is precisely the kind of material the public is turning to… You can see everything has grossed nearly $50 million so far, after having the highest-grossing opening weekend from fewer than 1,000 locations since 2006. Borat and for a doc since 2004 Fahrenheit 9/11 — the question was: should the industry broaden its idea of what a document is?
Bar-Lev, a long-time member of the doc branch, spoke enthusiastically in favor of You can see everything: “If you have never read an article by Werner Herzog entitled The Minnesota Manifestohe says that the real films, which have this reputation of being the most truthful — he says: ‘Yeah, it’s the truth, but it’s the truth of the Yellow Pages, it’s the truth of the facts, it’s like an actuarial truth, it’s not ecstatic truth.’ You can get to an ecstatic truth with re-enactments, with playing with the camera, all these different techniques… And just saying, “Because I didn’t edit something, and I just pointed at the camera,” that’s not necessarily more truthful. And it’s a shame that the doc branch is sometimes narrow-minded. I’m glad you brought it up. And a lot of times they forget – we forget – that this is an Oscar for a movie, not for an issue. We all care about the issues, but that’s not what this Oscar is about. It’s supposed to be about technique and craftsmanship. And I’m really happy that your film (which is about Fielder) is doing so well because I think it pushes the boundaries and we all learn from it.
Vasarhelyi, another branch member (who won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2018) Free singleplayer), interjected: “Just a moment of appreciation: in Manhattan last weekend, you couldn’t find a place to see your film!” Fielder replied: “It’s wild! I don’t know.” She continued: “I was like, ‘What’s happening?! It was like the finest moment in non-fiction. She added: “How I watched your film: the constraints became an opportunity, right? And that’s formal innovation, and that’s what was great – like The act of killingone of the greatest formal innovations in nonfiction.
Fielder, for his part, emphasized that he loves documentaries and that he and Oppenheim did not set out to make a documentary with unconventional techniques. “Honestly, I’m such a fan of documentaries and I think about that stuff so much,” he said. “This project is different than others, but I feel like the process of making it was just including everything that needed to be included to make it as honest as possible. It wasn’t a project choice to try to do something different – for example, we were very strict in trying to be precise, in trying to describe things in an authentic way. The only reason we started including these other elements (like reenactments) was because it seemed dishonest. not has. We would actually be concealment things from the viewer if we did not tell them what we knew or what we observed.
Fielder continued: “I think everyone who makes documentaries can relate, and they’ve experienced – when you’re in a room with cameras, it’s not the same as when you’re not in a room with cameras – you’re part of the story, and the person is acting a certain way because of you and the camera, whether you recognize it or not. And I think about those things when I watch documentaries. And Lance and I, putting that together, we said, “What is the information” What is missing for the viewer to try to make sense of this as we are? And so it’s just this process that has sort of evolved.
He concluded: “I don’t really know what makes something not a doctor; I know what it would be like if we didn’t do these things: it would just be a less honest version of the story. But the reason the film is doing well and all that, (I hope) is that people are excited about documentaries and want to see documentaries in theaters and are just paying more attention to all the great documentaries that are being made now. It’s really great; it’s a big win for me, because I love documentaries and I’ve been thinking about them my whole life.
Gn entert
