Movies

Thirty-four days before she's sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. What begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss.

Rather than revisiting her past and the collapse of her business, the film is set in the intimate, isolated confines of her everyday life. It follows a woman as she confronts her final moments of freedom, with cameras capturing her interactions, family life and behaviour. The narrative is an in-depth psychological study of a character under extreme pressure and facing uncertainty. As the inevitable deadline approaches, Holmes tries to present her own version of reality to the filmmakers, prompting the question: who controls the narrative — the protagonist, who is trying to manage her image, or the camera lens that documents her every move? What begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic convicted fraudster evolves into something entirely unexpected.

Perhaps it is a new kind of documentary, but it is certainly an innovative film that is both a crime story and a black comedy. It explores the complex relationship between truth and illusion, pushing the boundaries of the medium with its fresh approach to genre. In this surreal collaboration and experimental meta-documentary, the filmmaking duo masterfully intertwine Oppenheim's tense atmosphere (Prime Time, 2026) and Fielder's exploration of human deception (The Rehearsal, 2022), transforming real-life portraits of con artist Elizabeth Holmes into pure absurdity and erasing the line between reality and performance entirely. Its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival came as a complete surprise to audiences, as filmmakers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim had been working on the film in strict secrecy for three years under the A24 banner. Upon its release, the documentary immediately broke viewership records and became a global sensation.