Bleecker Street will release the documentary in theaters on October 16.

Last year, the Academy sent a memo reminding Oscar voters that documentaries are eligible for nominations not just in their own category but across others, including Best Picture — something the Oscars has never achieved.

Can you believe that in the Academy’s 97-year history, no documentary has ever been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar? Odds are some of the most acclaimed non-fiction work of the year, especially “Once Upon A Time in Harlem,” somehow won’t pull off a historic surprise.

However, here come Nathan Fielder, and co-director Lance Oppenheim, who has become the toast of Telluride with his meta Elizabeth Holmes doc “You Can See Everything” earning the best reviews of the fest — 92 on Metacritic — and now you have many of the trades’ Oscar experts sounding the alarm on Fielder/Oppenheim’s film potentially making history.

It’s been confirmed by Variety that A24 will be campaigning “You Can See Everything” for best picture consideration, including Variety, TheWrap and THR. Is there a legitimate chance that Fielder’s 174-minute doc cracks the top 10? It’s too early to tell. Every year, much-buzzed films out of Telluride either deflate weeks later, or accentuate the momentum.

The premise alone—Holmes inviting a film crew into her life just 37 days before reporting to prison, with the project ultimately spanning three years—suggests this is going to be something much stranger than a conventional true-crime documentary. And Fielder’s involvement, given how extreme and unpredictable his previous work can be, is obviously resulting in questions of whether this is even a full-fledged doc since “You Can See Everything” is actually a hybrid. According to reports, it’s 90 minutes of a documentary, and then 90 minutes of ..something else entirely.

It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out. There has been much acclaimed non-fiction these last 40 years which warranted a best picture nom but failed to do so, including “The Thin Blue Line,” “Roger & Me,” “Hoop Dreams,” “Bowling for Columbine,” “The Fog Of Warz,” “Grizzly Man,” and “The Act of Killing.”

It remains a glaring omission that no documentary has ever been recognized in Best Picture, especially in the 21st century, when nonfiction filmmaking has become increasingly prominent, with Netflix further boosting visibility, albeit with mostly trashy nonfiction works. Hell, we’ve even had animation crack the best picture lineup, three, to be precise: “Beauty and the Beast,” “Up” and “Toy Story 3.”

Why does nonfiction continue to be overlooked? Is it because documentaries don’t dominate the cultural conversation as much? Fielder and Oppenheim might finally have cracked the code with this film — but is it even a doc?

The review embargo has lifted on Alex Gibney’s “Musk,” and with that a teaser — and poster below — have been released as well.

I’m mostly in agreement with Ryan Lattanzio’s “B” grade IndieWire review — which is probably the same rating I’d give. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman is much more effusive in his praise. Other reviews include Next Best Picture (6/10), The Guardian (4/5). The Telegraph calls it a “hatchet job,” while Radio Times says “it’s far from a hatchet job.” At least THR acknowledges that “most people who sign up for the doc will have long ago made up their minds about Musk, so a one-sided argument won’t be a problem.”

The problem with “Musk” isn’t that it’s boring. It’s that it’s four hours long and, for much of that runtime, has surprisingly little new to say about Elon. Still, I can’t say that I was bored; here is such a fascinating figure of our times that telling his story, no matter how biased or unbiased it may be, and with this much detail, is of interest.

Gibney’s doc runs through the familiar Musk mythology — SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, MAGA, AI — but rarely finds a fresh angle on any of it. There are no major revelations, no explosive disclosures that fundamentally alter our understanding of Musk. Instead, Gibney offers a fairly conventional biography of a man whose rise, influence and controversies have already been exhaustively documented. I went in expecting to learn something I didn’t know. For the most part, I didn’t.

The SpaceX and Tesla material is easily the strongest — Musk didn’t start either of them — and the film becomes considerably less interesting once it moves into the post-intermission Twitter/MAGA section. Musk himself emerges as an enormous ego: pushy, provocative, deeply self-aggrandizing. There is something genuinely fascinating about his instincts as a businessman and innovator, and the documentary works best when it explores that side of him rather than simply cataloguing his latest controversies.

Unfortunately, Gibney keeps returning to an AI-generated Musk being interviewed. Since Musk refused to participate, the filmmaker opted to essentially manufacture his own version of him, and the device is every bit as distracting as it sounds. It’s particularly bizarre in a documentary that otherwise wants to examine the consequences of AI and Musk’s role in the technology. Rather than adding anything, the gimmick repeatedly undercuts the film.

The structure doesn’t help. “Musk” isn’t particularly chronological, while his upbringing in South Africa is given surprisingly short shrift — maybe ten minutes at most. The film seems, initially, to be searching for some kind of larger critique of Musk, before gradually settling into a more straightforward takedown. By the second half, it begins turning him into a larger-than-life boogeyman, ticking off the familiar list of Musk’s transgressions without doing much to complicate or deepen them.

There’s worthwhile material here, particularly when Gibney focuses on SpaceX and Tesla and the extraordinary ambition behind both companies. But for a four-hour documentary about one of the most consequential and polarizing figures of the modern era, “Musk” feels oddly safe. I was hoping for something more than just watchable.

“You Can See Everything” will hit theaters this October.

The announcement and teaser for A24’s “You Can See Everything,” a 174-minute documentary about Elizabeth Holmes from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, premiered last night at Telluride to wild reactions. The film hits theaters in October.

The premise alone—Holmes inviting a film crew into her life just 37 days before reporting to prison, with the project ultimately spanning three years—suggests this is going to be something much stranger than a conventional true-crime documentary. And Fielder’s involvement, given how extreme and unpredictable his previous work can be, is obviously the biggest draw.

The teaser feels unsettling, and that’s putting it lightly. Strange lighting, extreme close-ups, prolonged eye contact, and a deliberately surreal presentation. The fact that it’s apparently the real Holmes makes the footage even more uncanny. Has Fielder found a subject whose real-life behavior is so bizarre that it somehow goes beyond the uncomfortable comedy of “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal”?

Another question immediately comes to mind: What could Fielder have possibly done with Holmes for three years?

Holmes spent years convincing investors, journalists, employees and the public that they were seeing one thing, while Fielder has built a career around quietly watching people until they reveal something else. Putting these two personalities together feels like some kind of insane experiment. The fact that the footage already looks like psychological horror makes it even more irresistible.

So what should we expect? Telluride and A24 have asked press who attended yesterday’s secret screening not to reveal plot points. The early reactions have been extremely positive. This doesn’t sound like a conventional documentary built around straightforward interviews. It sounds more like two people trying to psychologically out-weird each other.

The teaser initially looks almost fictional, with Holmes coming across like an actress playing a horror-movie character. Her expressions and staring seem almost too cinematic. Then you remember that this is actually Elizabeth Holmes, which somehow makes it even more disturbing.

Deadline reviewed the film in cryptic fashion, noting its extraordinary access. Fielder retrieves Theranos machinery from storage, captures revealing encounters with Holmes, her partner and her parents, and eventually accompanies Holmes on her final drive to prison. His growing closeness with Holmes leaves even him baffled: “I don’t know why they wanted me there. Why am I there?”

And apparently, the film’s biggest surprise comes after Holmes enters prison, when what initially seems like the end of the story turns into a strange, increasingly noirish second act.

I love Fielder. “The Rehearsal” pushed his ideas further by turning reality itself into something he could stage, rehearse and manipulate. “The Curse” showed he could take those ideas into scripted drama and outright horror. But this Holmes documentary looks like something entirely different. And I have absolutely no idea what to expect.

Telluride: Everything we thought we knew about the beleaguered Theranos founder and convicted fraudster may or may not be true, according to A24’s made-in-secret new documentary.

Rebeca Huntt admits she wasn’t a sports fan. But making a film about American soccer superstar Megan Rapinoe changed all that.

“She’s a really important part of my generation, a once in a generation athlete, a no-bullshit player, a brave woman who stuck to her guns,” Huntt says on the phone from New York City.  “And I need more of those: hardworking, disciplined, glamorous. I’ve always respected athletes but didn’t really watch sports unless someone invited me to see a game live. And now I’ve become much more of a sports fan.”

It’s easy to see why a creative encounter with Rapinoe would have that impact. Rapinoe raised the profile of women’s soccer—check that, soccer, period, in America to spectacular heights, leading the U.S. team to Olympic gold and two World Cup championships, breaking scoring records along the way. She was also open about her queerness, a rarity in 2011. But it may be that her courageous political stances are what set her apart from other high-profile athletes, taking stands for pro-choice and equal pay for female soccer players and, most famously, taking a knee during the American national anthem. Huntt’s documentary takes us through all those controversies in the context of a full-on portrait that tracks Rapinoe’s early childhood through to the last of her playing days.

Huntt’s latest work is nothing like her compelling debut Beba, which played at TIFF in 2021. Beba is a profoundly personal film, an autobiography basically, about Huntt’s family and her upbringing and her often problematic relationships with family members. It’s raw, aching with its own vulnerability, and often experimental in form. Rapinoe gives the athlete’s life trajectory a linear arc and trades Huntt’s own vulnerability for intimacy with her subject.

“To make Beba, the most access I had was to myself,” she explains. “With this one, I was ready to step into someone else’s world.”

Fortunately, Rapinoe was ready to let her in. She talks about the good, like her joy of the sport and her coming out (I can’t decide whether her pink prom dress she wore in her pre-lesbian phase is funny or sad); the bad, like her beloved brother’s struggle with drug addiction; and the ugly, the vicious hostility she received because of her political opinions.

“Megan was extremely open. She was down for it from the start,” Huntt remembers. “We’d be talking and I’d say to her, ‘Time to go into the portal,’ and she’d say, ‘I’m ready and I’m excited to see where you’re going to take me.’ But athletes are very skilled with media. They’re doing interviews all the time and I had to find a way to take her to places she’d never been before.”

She’s successful, creating a film about a bona fide celebrity that’s intimate and reveals her as unique and wholly authentic. Authentic, in that she’s startlingly candid, and unique, in that there probably never has been a natural female soccer talent like hers. Footage of her as a young kid shows her demonstrating intricate footwork and shooting skills way beyond her years. It was clear that she was going to be a star. It’s akin to a child teaching herself how to play the violin and getting into Julliard as a teenager. Except that child would have practiced, whereas Rapinoe, though she was on the pitch almost daily, never really trained. It was Rapinoe’s wife-to-be, hoops star Sue Bird, who told her that she was great but could be magnificent if she embraced a training routine. And she was right. Rapinoe hit the gym after recovering from a knee injury and came back greater than ever.

Not that Rapinoe had it easy. In the film, Rapinoe describes the intense pressure of being a star. “God sprinkles something onto our athletes. To have this God-given talent and then keep playing at the highest level is very difficult,” observes Huntt. “They’re very skilled at handling media and they’ll drop a few posts on Instagram when they’re out and about, so we think they live these luxe lives.” But, she says, the battle to stay the best is a lonely one.

And so is the battle to stick your fundamental values. To make a statement against anti-Black racism in America, Colin Kaepernick led the movement in the National Football League to kneel during when America’s national anthem played before games. Rapinoe followed suit, kneeling during the national anthem in Seattle, where she played professionally, to express her solidarity with Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter in protest of police violence against Black Americans. As the film documents, the reaction was ferocious. Critics wanted her off the team. Fox news commentators were apoplectic. There were death threats.

In the face of it, Megan was unrepentant, although distressed that she was the only white athlete to support Kaepernick. At home games in Seattle, she was mercilessly booed. But she seemed eerily unaffected, something that astonished her teammates. She says she managed the pressure via the classic strategy (usually involuntarily, but not in her case) of disassociation, which is a recurring theme on the doc.

“Well, when you’re playing at that level, how can you not disassociate,” declares Huntt.

Rapinoe in the film takes it one step further, saying her ability to disconnect in the moment fueled her drive to win. “Disassociation,” she says, “made me a killer.”

Huntt traces Megan’s campaign for equal pay for women in soccer in a section of the film in which Rapinoe is at her most eloquent. As the women’s team was chalking up their World Cup victories, they were making one quarter of the money the men’s team was earning. The men had better money, better facilities and better travel arrangements though they’d won exactly zero World Cups. She led an intense campaign for equal pay for female players and in 2016, 28 players filed a discrimination complaint against the United States Soccer Federation. In 2019, when America won the World Cup, fans in the stands responded by angrily shouting,” Equal pay, equal pay.”

In the film, Rapinoe states the case clearly. “I’m working hard, I’m winning, I’m one of the best and one plus one is not equalling two… I’m doing this to create a paradigm shift, not just for women soccer players but for other women athletes and for women in general.”

“She’s the real deal,” says Huntt. “It’s corny but it’s the truth. She walks the talk. She is that person and in the most minute detail and she stands up for what she believes. She wasn’t making millions, but she had a lot to lose. It’s kind of remarkable.”

In a court filing, lawyers for the U.S. team stated baldly why they opposed the women’s claim, citing biological differences. Men, they stated, “have more responsibility and play at a higher level based on skill and strength.” It was a startling admission of basic discrimination.

Rapinoe knew that relying on the assertion that women are just not as good or important as men was a ludicrous, losing argument. Reflecting on the filing, she recalled her amazement, pretending to address U.S. Soccer directly. “You just took that biggest fucking L [loss] and gave it to yourself. I always knew that you felt that way about us and now you said the quiet part out loud.”

When I ask Huntt whether she appreciated the gold Rapinoe gave her in that moment, the director was at her fiercest. “The golden part of it was that they fuckin’ won,” to the tune of a $20 million dollar settlement, making the American women the highest paid female soccer players in the world. “But they shouldn’t have had to play the fucking Hunger Games to make it happen.”

Even counting the brutal backlash to her political activism, facing the end of her career may have been Rapinoe’s most vulnerable time. Only after she retired from playing did she actively undertake the self-reflection that helped her reject disassociation as a survival tacit and embrace each moment with eyes open.

“(In retiring,) she was going through a kind of death,” says Huntt. “Athletes are our rock stars, our gods. She had to figure out how to be useful in the world. These are times that are going to be messy. It was a moment in which someone who embodies greatness was expanding into a reality where that greatness would no longer define them.”

It’s clear that Huntt’s affinity with her subject was a major asset in the making of the film, helping her develop that trust director requires to get the most out of an interview. The more she shot, the more she learned and the more she could empathize with Rapinoe.

“I do relate to the importance of being authentic, and of showing up as you are,” she explains. “Especially for women or any sort of marginalized person, that does put you at risk and makes you more vulnerable; however, showing up authentically is where the real power is. And by power I mean the actual opportunity to take responsibility for myself and live life fully.

“I’m not a lesbian, so I can’t relate specifically to coming out, but I relate deeply to fighting to live your truth.”

Rapinoe screens at TIFF September 10, 11 and 20.

Get all of POV’s TIFF coverage here.

The post Rebeca Huntt Gets Out of Her Own Head with TIFF Doc Rapinoe appeared first on POV Magazine.

By Gregory Crofton Ronzito, Ronzo, Hoka Ron … whatever you called him … the nicknames meant one thing: People liked and knew of Ron Shapiro. He was a happy guy, adventurous and funny. And he would really listen to what someone had to say. When he arrived in Oxford, Miss., in the mid-1970s he didn’t…

The post How a Guy Named ‘RONZO’ Loosened Up a Small Town in North Mississippi appeared first on Channel Nonfiction.

By Gregory Crofton Ronzito, Ronzo, Hoka Ron … whatever you called him … the nicknames meant one thing: People liked and knew of Ron Shapiro. He was a happy guy, adventurous and funny. And he would really listen to what someone had to say. When he arrived in Oxford, Miss., in the mid-1970s he didn’t…

The post How a Guy Named ‘RONZO’ Loosened Up a Small Town in North Mississippi appeared first on Channel Nonfiction.

Official trailer for the new documentary “By George: It All Comes Down.” For more information, visit: https://july9th.com

SYNOPSIS:

A one-hour documentary about our first real moment of declaring independence 250 years ago, when New Yorkers toppled the statue of King George III at Bowling Green after a first public reading of the freshly inked document on July 9, 1776. What happened to the statue after that? The answer might surprise you. Made of lead to look like a Roman statue of Marcus Aurelius, it got melted down by a Connecticut girl into artillery balls to kill the enemy. Its decapitated head got smuggled back to England, probably hiding to this day in a colonist’s estate. In this film, we consider the rise and fall of empires, the toppling of statues, and the removal of monuments to Confederates and slave holders in the afterlife of George Floyd. We follow historian Abby Suckle on her trail to finally find the missing head of King George III, telling the story of how it all happened, along with reflections from Ivan Schwartz whose Studio EIS in Brooklyn has spent a half century sculpting statues of legends from American history in all its complexity: from Presidential libraries, to a re-creation of King George’s statue.

CREDITS:

filmed & edited by H. Paul Moon | @zenviolence

featuring Abby Suckle & Ivan Schwartz

original music by @PhilippeGerber

additional camera & sound by Dennis Cembalo