Directors discuss making Elizabeth Holmes documentary at New York Film Festival

Co-directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim spoke about their documentary about former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes during a question-and-answer session after the film’s New York Film Festival screening. The movie, titled “You Can See Everything,” follows Holmes in the weeks before she entered a Texas women’s prison in 2023.

Fielder said Holmes herself approached distributor A24 to arrange the project after reading John Carreyrou’s book about the Theranos scandal. He recalled meeting her and feeling conflicted, noting that “she seems so genuine at times” but also recognizing “she’s a liar.”

The filmmakers lived in Holmes’s home for 34 days while filming, observing that even ordinary moments could be interpreted differently by the two directors. Oppenheim likened the experience to the 1979 Soviet film “Stalker,” saying the “laws of reality … evaporated, and no one could agree.”

According to a Vanity Fair report, Holmes’s fiancé Billy Evans attempted to influence the documentary’s direction toward the end of shooting, after which communication with him ceased. Evans has not viewed the film.

A promotional truck with an LED screen reading “Free Elizabeth Holmes” was parked outside Lincoln Center after the screening, linked to an online campaign that claims Holmes’s innocence and the functionality of her testing technology. The documentary is scheduled for theatrical release on Oct. 16.