Co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the 174-minute documentary You Can See Everything chronicles the final days of freedom for convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes before her 11-year prison sentence. Premiering unexpectedly at the Telluride Film Festival and later at the New York Film Festival, the A24 release blends observational reality-TV-as-hangout-movie aesthetics with deep psychological inquiry into a scammer who insists she committed no crime.
The Bottom Line
- The Project: A 174-minute documentary co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, capturing Elizabeth Holmes 34 days before her 2023 prison surrender.
- The Access: Fielder embedded himself in the Del Mar beachside rental where Holmes lived with her partner Billy Evans and their two children.
- The Structure: The film splits cleanly into two distinct halves, moving from intimate documentary observation in the first half to a surreal, meta-narrative exploration in the second half after Holmes enters federal prison.
An Unannounced Festival Premiere Shakes Up Telluride and New York
For weeks leading up to its sudden unveiling, the project remained an industry whisper. That pre-screening buzz reached fever pitch when variety.com noted that an unannounced mystery screening at the Telluride Film Festival was revealed to be You Can See Everything. The sensation of disbelief did not subside as the movie played out, but only intensified according to variety.com.
Embedding in a Del Mar Beachside Rental Prior to Prison
Thirty-four days before the start of Holmes’ prison sentence in 2023, Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim brought a camera crew to the spacious wood-paneled beachside home in Del Mar where Holmes was living with her partner Billy Evans and their two children, variety.com reported.
| Metric / Detail | Reported Fact |
|---|---|
| Directors | Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim |
| Runtime | 2 hours 54 minutes (174 minutes) |
| Studio / Backer | A24 |
| Primary Setting | Del Mar beachside rental home (San Diego) |
| Premiere Venues | Telluride Film Festival and New York Film Festival |
Shifting Into a Meta-Surreal Second Half After Incarceration
While the first half of the nearly three-hour runtime functions as a straightforward, intimate portrait of a family bracing for an 11-year federal prison sentence, the second half shifts dramatically.
Confronting the Legacy of a 9 Billion Dollar Fraud
The documentary revisits the shadow of Theranos, the blood-testing startup that achieved a $9 billion valuation in 2015 before collapsing under the weight of revelations that its revolutionary small-volume blood-testing technology did not actually exist. variety.com noted that Holmes managed to convince top-tier investors like Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison, alongside an influential board of directors featuring George P. Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and James Mattis, despite persistent warnings from Stanford medical professor Phyllis Gardner that the concept was unworkable. In the film, Fielder avoids questioning her guilt outright, instead seeking to examine the psychological mechanisms behind her unwavering insistence on her own innocence.
