Will Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s ‘You Can See Everything’ Score a Best Picture Nomination? Not If Oscar History Is Any Guide

The look at Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is the breakout of fall festival season, but it faces major challenges in the Best Picture or Best Documentary race.

There was a fear that when A24 started taking private equity money a few years ago, the studio’s creative license would take a hit. We didn’t need to worry. In practice, its version of scaling up and going broader has been the conceptual horror film “Backrooms,” directed at the time by virtual teenager, or the bombastic “Marty Supreme,” a period film about a caddish ping-pong player. Both of these idiosyncratic films broke box office records for the company.

Looking at A24’s awards slate this year, what has been the biggest proof that the company has not lost its edge, but has continued to capitalize on it, is that their film that has the most festival crowds talking is not their Julianne Moore musical comedy, or the queer take on “Big Daddy.” It’s a documentary about, of all things, the well-trodden territory of jailed Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Part of the appeal of “You Can See Everything” has been the mystery surrounding it. Even those who knew it was the secret film premiering at Telluride 2026 were out of the loop on major details about the film. Hence the hype for the Nathan Fielder/Lance Oppenheim crescendoing to the point of some viewers asking “Could this be the first documentary to be nominated for Best Picture?”

Not to imply the Colorado mountain air got to too many people’s heads, but that is an uphill battle. After its electrifying premiere, there were quickly reports that A24 is focused on a Best Picture campaign for the film in large part because the Academy’s fusty Documentary Branch may opt not to nominate it for Best Documentary Feature. They’ve done it before — just ask the makers of “Hoop Dreams” and “Roger & Me.”

IndieWire’s Anne Thompson has concisely spelled out the challenge behind “You Can See Everything” or any documentary landing a Best Picture nomination and that’s because documentaries do not often reach across to other branches. Yes, they are films with producers, cinematographers, editors, editors, sound, music, even visual effects involved with them, but the biggest branch in the Academy is Actors, a group that the majority of documentaries do not employ.

Even with the Directors and Writers branches, it’s a challenge, because the major directors and writers in the documentary world, who could advocate for their peers, are mostly members of the separate, aforementioned Documentary Branch.

This is not to say that just because members of one’s branch were not involved in a film, that members of the Casting Directors branch or the Makeup Artists and Hairstylists branch, for example, don’t watch or even vote for documentaries. It is just that most branches favor scripted films, as those are the projects members are most familiar with and employed on in the greatest numbers.

And yet, there are plenty of examples of documentaries popping up as Oscar nominees in categories outside of Best Documentary Feature. Best Original Song is often one of those destinations, with the most recent example being “Sweet Dreams of Joy” from the 2025 documentary “Viva Verdi!” The nominees for that category are determined by the Music Branch.

There’s also plenty of documentaries that have been a country’s submission for the Best International Feature Oscar, which is a category that all Oscar voters are allowed to choose to participate in, as long as they prove they have seen enough of the contenders. “Collective” (Romania) and “Flee” (Denmark) are two recent examples that made it both into that category and Best Documentary Feature. The latter film was also a Best Animated Feature nominee, allowing it to tie the record for most Oscar nominations for a documentary (the other record holder being “Woodstock,” which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature, Best Sound, and Best Editing in 1971).

We also would be remiss if we didn’t bring up “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Michael Moore’s Palme d’Or winner that opted not to submit for Best Documentary Feature in order to launch a Best Picture campaign. Even with the momentum of having just won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for “Bowling for Columbine” and the film’s massive box office success, Moore’s film failed to land a nomination for the top prize.

Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim absolutely are filmmakers the industry should be excited about, and the word on “You Can See Everything” is that it is the type of glitch in the matrix that can affect change. But the Academy is very, very slow moving. And Fielder’s other experiments, like the Showtime drama series “The Curse,” went unnoticed at the Emmys, another awards show voted on by industry peers. That suggests that the filmmaker and performer is not on the general public’s radar in as big a way as the breathless media coverage suggests. At least not yet.

But considering “You Can See Everything” is a film that by all accounts delivers on the promise that “You’ve seen nothing like this before,” it would be wrong to totally count it out. Without going too deep into the politics of the Documentary Branch, which deserves its own article, a huge indicator the film would have legs on the Oscar front is if, come early December, it triumphantly makes its way onto the Best Documentary Feature shortlist. If that happens, the power of “You Can See Everything” may not be denied.