What we’re seeing in public is nothing short of a phenomenon. You Can See Everything has an unrivaled mix of critical acclaim and box-office power, with a sterling 97 Metacritic score and the biggest opening weekend for a documentary in more than 20 years. The documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim follows Elizabeth Holmes in the days before she began her prison sentence in 2023 and branches in many directions from there — and it’s likely to become A24’s biggest hit in what’s been a year full of them.
What’s happening behind closed doors may be even more fascinating.
My fellow Oscar pundits have been speculating for weeks about whether a semisecret participant in the film could score a basically unprecedented acting nomination for a documentary. But the pricklier discussion is about the documentary itself, which could be snubbed in the best documentary category even while landing an equally unprecedented best picture nomination.
“I had a conversation with an Academy Award-winning documentarian who said they think this may be in the conversation for the greatest documentary of all time,” one documentary branch voter tells me. “I also had conversations with very well-established colleagues, and I would describe their response as being incredibly jealous and not very favorable — way more than anything we’re seeing in the public discourse.”
To understand why the biggest documentary of the year might have to sit out the Oscars category that honors the film’s genre, you have to understand the Academy’s documentary branch and its fraught, self-flagellating history. The documentary branch voter I spoke to puts it bluntly: “If there is a populist film that we perceive is going to win the Oscar, it doesn’t get nominated.”
Yes, expect some spoilers ahead.