IDFA to screen Elizabeth Holmes & Elon Musk documentaries at Amsterdam festival

The IDFA will include screenings of documentaries on two rather controversial figures this year: Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes. The film festival is taking place in Amsterdam from November 12 to 22.

In the four-hour-long documentary on Elon Musk, titled simply Musk, director Alex Gibney looks at Musk’s many faces, focusing on the question of how the notorious businessman traded his climate ambitions for working with Donald Trump. The documentary features archival footage, interspersed with interviews with Musk’s associates and family members, including ex-wife Justine Musk and father Errol Musk.

Musk himself declined to participate, so Gibney trained an AI model using Musk’s interviews and public appearances and interviewed it. “The resulting grotesque avatar may well offer a compelling reflection of Musk’s vision for the future,” the IDFA wrote in its synopsis of the documentary.

The documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the infamous health-tech company Theranos, is titled You Can See Everything. Filmmakers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim spoke to Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, just before Holmes’ 11-year prison sentence for fraud.

IDFA’s synopsis describes the 174-minute-long documentary as a “cat-and-mouse” game between the filmmakers and Holmes and Evans. “Fielder questions, charms, probes, and challenges, doing everything he can to get a handle on the situation. But who’s playing who, here?” the IDFA wrote. “Awkward, funny, and nail-bitingly tense, this film—three years in the making, under a veil of secrecy—explores the challenges and limits of understanding and portraying a human being.”

Other documentaries at the IDFA this year include The Mayor: Halsema & Amsterdam, which follows Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema during a pivotal year, and Sixteen Moments of My Life, a documentary by Albert Serra about Ingrid Caven singing at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.

The IDFA will be held in Amsterdam from November 12 to 22. The full program can be found on the festival’s website. Regular ticket sales open at noon on October 28.