In this file photo, former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes leaves federal court in San Jose, Calif., March 17, 2023.
Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
A new documentary about Theranos founder and former Houston resident Elizabeth Holmes premiered Sunday as a secret screening at the Telluride Film Festival and will be released in theaters in October.
The film follows Holmes and her partner Billy Evans for three years, beginning with the 34 days leading up to her prison sentence.
Here’s what to know before seeing the highly anticipated movie directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim.
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Who is Elizabeth Holmes?
Holmes founded the company Theranos Inc. when she 19, claiming she had created technology that used a few drops of blood to detect many diseases and conditions, revolutionizing health care. While the technology never worked, she dropped out of Stanford after her sophomore year to launch what became a multi-billion dollar company.
She was the CEO of Theranos for 15 years.
What did Elizabeth Holmes do?
Holmes’ blood testing technology was revealed to be fraudulent in 2015 after a Wall Street Journal exposé reported that Theranos didn’t use its own finger-prick device because the technology did not work the way she had claimed.
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She was found guilty in January 2022 on four counts of defrauding investors, three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Why is Elizabeth Holmes back in the news today?
Holmes is in the news because of the surprise debut of Fielder and Oppenheim’s documentary about her called “You Can See Everything.”
“You Can See Everything” is the first film about Holmes since she began her prison sentence. Previously, there was a series about Holmes starring Amanda Seyfried in 2022 called “The Dropout,” and a 2019 HBO documentary that investigated Holmes’ claims and the downfall of Theranos.
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Where is Elizabeth Holmes from?
Holmes was born in Washington, D.C., but her family moved to Houston when she was 10. She lived in a million-dollar home in Tanglewood within walking distance of Buffalo Bayou.
She attended St. John’s School in River Oaks before graduating in 2002 and going off to college at Stanford, which she attended until March 2004.
Where is Elizabeth Holmes now?
Holmes has been in a minimum-security women’s prison in Bryan, Texas, since May 2025 to serve her 11 year sentence.
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The Federal Prison Camp in Bryan is about 100 miles outside of Houston and is home to more than 600 inmates, most of whom are serving sentences for non-violent offenses and white-collar crimes. Other current and previous high-profile inmates include Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Star Jen Shah, former Enron executive Lea Fastow and Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Who directed ‘You Can See Everything’?
“You Can See Everything” was directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim.
Fielder, who moved in with Holmes and Evans to film the documentary, is a Canadian comedian, writer and director. Fielder is most known for his docu-reality comedy shows “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal.”
In “The Rehearsal,” Fielder aimed to help people deal with difficult situations by creating elaborate simulations of their lives. In the second season, Fielder works with a pilot who flies for a subsidiary of United out of Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Since Fielder was not able to obtain permission from United or Bush Airport to film in private areas where pilots gather, he created a large-scale replica of a Bush Airport terminal.
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Oppenheim is a director known for his non-fiction storytelling in documentaries “Some Kind of Heaven” and “Spermworld,” and his first narrative feature film “Primetime,” which made its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 5.
“Primetime,” also an A24 film, will be released in theaters on Sept. 25.
What to know about ‘You Can See Everything’
“You Can See Everything” is a nearly three hour documentary about Holmes, directed by Fielder and Oppenheim and released by A24. It made its debut as a secret screening at the Telluride Film Festival to critical acclaim.
Variety’s review called the film “a one-of-a-kind reality-TV-as-hangout-movie psychodrama circus,” and The Hollywood Reporter writes that the film reaches for accuracy, but “ends up asking, with plenty of humor but no small amount of wisdom, what ‘accuracy’ would even look like in the first place.”
The film is expected to hit theaters in October, but an official date has not been announced.