Is Nathan Fielder about to win an Oscar for a movie about Elizabeth Holmes?

He has a real shot, and the past week turned it from festival chatter into math. You Can See Everything, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary Nathan Fielder directed with Lance Oppenheim, opened to $15 million from just 855 theaters on October 16–18 — the second-biggest opening for a documentary ever, behind only Fahrenheit 9/11, and per Deadline the biggest opening for any film in under 1,000 theaters since Borat in 2006.

The reviews are keeping pace with the ticket sales. The film's Metacritic score has climbed to 99, and the r/boxoffice crowd did the historical homework:

"I just checked and only 5 movies have gotten a 98+ on Metacritic this century."

— a commenter on r/boxoffice, 68 upvotes

A24 reportedly spent under $10 million on a 174-minute, R-rated documentary, watched it post a $17,544 per-theater average against Street Fighter's wide release, and is expanding it this Friday. PostTrak's audience exit polls came back at 92 percent "definite recommend." For a nonfiction film, every one of those numbers is somewhere between rare and unheard of.

What Fielder actually made

The access is the story. Holmes and her partner Billy Evans invited cameras in for the 34 days before she reported to federal prison for defrauding Theranos investors, and the filmmakers kept shooting for roughly three years — Holmes had approached A24 about a documentary before Fielder and Oppenheim ever joined. The premiere was a secret Telluride screening on September 6 where attendees surrendered their phones.

Don't miss: Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes doc is making audiences feel sorry for Elizabeth Holmes

Fielder planned to stay behind the camera and failed, which is where the film found its real subject. His own account of meeting Holmes, reported by Variety around the New York Film Festival screening, describes a man monitoring his own brain in real time:

"When I met her, I remember having this weird experience where she seems so genuine at times."

— Nathan Fielder

He described "clocking and tracking" his thoughts and repeating to himself: "Okay, I know she's a liar." Oppenheim confirmed it wasn't just him — "Every person that worked on this movie was going through a similar feeling of cognitive dissonance."

And that, I'd argue, is why this is the best thing Fielder has ever made. His entire career, from Nathan for You to The Rehearsal, runs on him being the most manipulative person in the room; here he met someone better at it, admitted it on camera, and turned the documentary into a record of his own susceptibility. The strangest flourish: Amanda Seyfried appears in the film both as herself and as Holmes — her second time in the role after The Dropout, which won her an Emmy.

The man whose job is deceiving people on camera spent three years being charmed by a convicted fraudster. He kept the cameras on himself while it happened.

The Oscar math

The Best Documentary Feature race now has a frontrunner with a box-office argument, a 99 on Metacritic, and a director whose name sells tickets. If it wins in March, Fielder — a Comedy Central alum who graduated from one of Canada's top business schools before deciding to prank people for a living — collects his first Oscar for it, a trajectory Reddit is already processing:

"Nathan is about to win his first Oscar, f—ing wild and so happy for him."

— a commenter on r/boxoffice, 291 upvotes

The nominations come out January 21, 2027. Between now and then, the thing to watch is the expansion: Fahrenheit 9/11 still holds the opening record this film just missed, and with a wide release next weekend, even that may not survive the month.

Previously we wrote: Street Fighter (2026) cast and characters: Vega's mask goes to a country star who has never shown his face onstage