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When the Telluride Film Festival unveiled its secret screening on September 6, the audience expecting a conventional premiere got something far stranger. The mystery film was You Can See Everything—a 174-minute documentary about convicted Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, co-directed by comedian Nathan Fielder (The Rehearsal, Nathan for You) and filmmaker Lance Oppenheim (Some Kind of Heaven). By the time the credits rolled, critics were calling it “one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen” and “maybe the most hysterical, shocking, insane documentary I’ve ever seen”. Some even placed it on their “best of the decade” lists.
But this is no ordinary true-crime doc. It’s a reality-TV-as-hangout-movie psychodrama that pushes the boundaries of nonfiction storytelling—and leaves viewers questioning what “truth” even means.
The Setup: 34 Days of Total Access
The film began in 2023, just 34 days before Holmes was set to report to a minimum-security federal prison in Bryan, Texas, to serve an 11-year sentence for defrauding investors. After years of media silence, Holmes and her partner Billy Evans—father of her two children—invited Fielder’s crew into their beachside San Diego rental with an unusual promise: “You can see everything”.
What followed was an intimate, often uncomfortable immersion. Fielder, with his signature deadpan delivery, lurked behind doorframes, captured mundane domestic moments (the couple’s contrasting approaches to scrambling eggs proved “weirdly telling”), and asked the kinds of blunt questions most journalists would hesitate to pose. Evans even let cameras film him showering—nothing was off-limits.
The Twist: Holmes in Her Own Words—and Her Own Delusion
Holmes, speaking publicly for the first time in nearly a decade, maintains her innocence with unnerving conviction. She tells Fielder she has “never told a lie in her life”—not just about Theranos, but about anything, ever. Her defense? The Theranos device did work; the chemistry simply hadn’t been figured out yet. It’s a level of denial that borders on the sociopathic, and Fielder’s rigorous skepticism never lets her off the hook.
In one particularly revealing scene, Fielder shows Holmes and Evans the Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First?”—and Holmes cannot grasp the joke. For Fielder, it’s a window into her psychology: a malignant narcissist who needs words to mean only what she decrees.
The Meta-Layer: Amanda Seyfried Enters the Frame
Here’s where the documentary takes its most audacious turn. Once Holmes enters prison and can no longer be filmed, Fielder brings in Amanda Seyfried—who won an Emmy for portraying Holmes in the Hulu series The Dropout—to read transcripts of Holmes’ phone calls and interviews. Seyfried’s performance grows so eerily accurate that she begins to sympathize with Holmes, especially regarding Evans’ controlling behavior.
This isn’t just a stunt; it’s a philosophical inquiry. By having an actress re-perform Holmes’ own words, Fielder blurs the line between documentary, performance, and deception—forcing audiences to ask: What is authenticity, really?
Billy Evans: The Unraveling Partner
Evans emerges as a figure nearly as fascinating as Holmes. He admits to running Holmes’ X (formerly Twitter) account as if he were her, posts hostile tweets under her name, and even tries to negotiate a profit-sharing deal with A24 executives without Holmes’ knowledge. He sleeps on a bare bedframe, claims to prefer it, and exposes a dark, controlling side that some viewers found repugnant.
Yet the film doesn’t use Evans as an excuse for Holmes’ actions. Instead, it presents a toxic dynamic that raises uncomfortable questions about manipulation, complicity, and who is really pulling the strings.
Critical Reception: “A Fever Dream”
Reactions from Telluride have been ecstatic—and bewildered. Matt Neglia of Next Best Picture called it a “mesmerizing psychological excavation of truth, performance, and self-deception”. Pete Hammond of Deadline described it as “a hell of a ride” and “unlike any I have ever seen in terms of pure access”. Another critic wrote that the film “starts as one thing before evolving into something that literally took my breath away”.
Even Fielder himself seems unsure of what he experienced. At the post-screening Q&A, moderated by Emma Stone, he admitted: “I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced. I don’t know why they want me there. I’m a weird guy. I don’t get it. That messed with my head”. He added that he hopes audiences will help him make sense of it all.
Why It Matters
You Can See Everything isn’t really about whether Holmes is guilty—the courts have already decided that. It’s about something more unsettling: How do people like Elizabeth Holmes tick? And how many of them are out there?
Fielder and Oppenheim have crafted a work that’s smart, funny, and deeply uncomfortable—a documentary that eats its own tail, overlapping reality, performance, and deception until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. It’s a boundary-pushing achievement that leaves you haunted, not by answers, but by the questions it refuses to settle.
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