What's happened
The Guardian, Business Insider UK and The Guardian have covered the avant-garde documentary You Can See Everything, which follows Elizabeth Holmes before her 11-year fraud sentence. The film juxtaposes a tense interview dynamic with a broader meditation on truth and manipulation in the age of media spectacle.
What's behind the headline?
Analysis
- The film is a dual-structure work, part true-crime portrait, part meta-documentary about how documentaries shape belief.
- It questions the boundary between truth and performance, exploiting Holmes’s charisma and the viewer’s desire to believe.
- Runtime and secrecy build a cultural moment: the film is as much about the audience as about Holmes.
- Future impact: the film’s reception could influence how future nonfiction projects balance access, consent, and ethical filming practices.
Read closely, the reporting across outlets shows a consistent interest in the film’s form and its potential Oscar run, rather than simply recounting Holmes’s case.
How we got here
Elizabeth Holmes’s Theranos saga has been well documented. The documentary You Can See Everything follows her in 2023 before prison, with a second half in 2025 exploring consequences and perception. It has sparked Oscar chatter as a potential best-picture documentary nominee.
Our analysis
The Guardian presents a critical account of the film’s two-part structure and its awards prospects; Business Insider UK highlights the film’s tense interview dynamics and questions about Holmes’s responses; The Guardian’s London interview frames the work within awards season and Oppenheim’s broader oeuvre.
Go deeper
- Will this film set a new standard for documentary storytelling in awards races?
- How will audiences respond to a piece that doubles as both investigation and performance?
- What does this say about the future of investigative docu films in Silicon Valley scandals?
More on these topics
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Elizabeth Holmes - American biotechnology entrepreneur convicted of fraud
Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984) is an American biotechnology entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud in connection with her blood-testing company, Theranos. The company's valuation soared after it claimed to have revolutionized blood testing
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HBO - Cable television company
Home Box Office is an American pay television network owned by WarnerMedia Studios & Networks Group and the flagship property of parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc.
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Lance Oppenheim - American filmmaker
Lance Oppenheim is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and producer from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His work blends cinematic genres to explore the lives of people who create homes in unconventional spaces and places.
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Theranos - Defunct American privately held health-technology company
Theranos Inc. () was an American privately held corporation that was touted as a breakthrough health technology company. Founded in 2003 by then 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos raised more than US$700 million from venture capitalists and private investors, resulting in a $9 billion valuation at its peak in 2013 and 2014. The company falsely claimed that it had devised blood tests that could be performed rapidly and accurately, while requiring very small amounts of blood, all using compact automated devices that the company had developed. A turning point came in 2015, when medical research professor John Ioannidis, and later, professor of clinical biochemistry Eleftherios Diamandis, along with investigative journalist John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal, questioned the validity of Theranos' technology. The company faced a string of legal and commercial challenges from medical authorities, investors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), state attorneys general, former business partners, patients, and others. By June 2016, Forbes estimated that Holmes's personal net worth had dropped from $4.5 billion to...