Hollywood may have found an unexpected contender for the Best Picture race at the 99th Academy Awards on March 15, 2027. Forget the presumed frontrunners like “The Odyssey,” “La Bola Negra,” Palme d’Or winner “Fjord,” or “Wild Horse Nine.” Since its U.S. theatrical release on Friday, October 16, “You Can See Everything” — the curious project from Canadian actor, comedian, and director Nathan Fielder, made in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim (“Primetime”) — has completely changed the conversation. And it’s a documentary, not a work of fiction.
A Surprise Launch and a Record-Breaking Start
To understand the phenomenon, one must look at how the film was rolled out. It was presented as a total surprise at the Telluride Film Festival on September 6, after being produced in the strictest secrecy. The same day, A24 released an enigmatic and hard-hitting first trailer that immediately captured attention — and it worked remarkably well.
The film caught the American box office off guard, delivering the strongest opening for a non-musical documentary since Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which won the Palme d’Or in 2004. In its first weekend, “You Can See Everything” grossed $15 million, landing in second place behind “Street Fighter.” For its second weekend, the film will expand from 800 screens to 2,600 — a clear sign of the buzz surrounding this cinematic oddity.
Inside the Mind of a Fallen Silicon Valley Icon
So what is “You Can See Everything” about? It offers an unprecedented three-year dive into the intimate world of Elizabeth Holmes, beginning with the 34 days leading up to her imprisonment for fraud in 2023.
Relatively unknown in France, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors. A businesswoman and one-time Silicon Valley wunderkind, she founded the medical technology company Theranos in the early 2000s, promising to revolutionize blood testing using just one or a few drops of blood. The former biotech prodigy fell from grace after devastating revelations about the misleading reliability and questionable accuracy of her supposedly revolutionary technology.
The scandal went down in history as Silicon Valley’s greatest modern con and fascinated the entire nation — inspiring the 2022 miniseries “The Dropout,” starring Amanda Seyfried. But that was before “You Can See Everything” and its singular gaze on a fallen icon who agreed to open her doors to the two directors in a bid for “radical transparency.” Her ambition — more or less subtle — was to rehabilitate her image and convince the world of her innocence, despite the skepticism (mixed with fascination) that Fielder displays, and which is plainly visible in the teaser and trailer.
An Oscar Bid Across Multiple Categories
Riding the wave of its initial U.S. success, A24 has decided to submit the film in a wide array of categories for the 2027 Oscars: Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, Best Documentary, and even Best Picture — where it is indeed eligible, since the category makes no distinction of genre, at least in theory. In 98 editions, no documentary has ever secured a spot in the Oscars’ top category, even after the field was expanded from five to ten films in 2022 to broaden diversity and visibility.
Another major surprise revealed by Variety: “You Can See Everything” is also in the running for Best Supporting Actress, as a well-known American actress (whose name is being withheld) adds a curious meta dimension to the nearly three-hour film.
Barely on the radar a few weeks ago, the film didn’t even appear in the usual American press pieces on early Oscar trends. Since then, it has upended the table, becoming the highest-rated film of the year on the cinephile app Letterboxd. It currently holds a rating equal to that of “The Shawshank Redemption” on IMDb, where the 1994 film is known for holding the highest score in the site’s history. Whether “You Can See Everything” will make history as the first documentary nominated for the Oscars’ highest honor will be revealed on January 21, 2027, when the nominations are announced.
