This doesn’t bode well.
Photo: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

Ye, f.k.a. Kanye West, is the subject of a new documentary, shot by an 18-year-old. Yes, for real. In Whose Name? is a wide-release documentary shot and directed by Nico Ballesteros, who took over documenting Ye’s life in the background for 15-hour days in 2019. The documentary spans six years of Ye’s life, including his descent into Nazism, his divorce, and his bipolar diagnosis. Below, find everything you need to know about the upcoming “unflinching portrait” of Ye.

“I’m off my meds for five months now,” Ye says at the start of the trailer. Then, Kim Kardashian’s voice cuts in, saying, through tears, that his “personality was not like this a few years ago.” Over shots of Ye in various locales, in front of post-modern architecture, and surrounded by sneakers, the past six years are traced from his Sunday Service to his presidential run to some of the most alarming and offensive stunts of his career. “Ya know the best part of being an artist and bipolar?” it concludes. “Anything you do and say is an art piece.” Viewers can judge that claim for themselves when the documentary premieres in theaters.

Nico Ballesteros was brought into film Ye, after Ye’s previous documentarians left, when he was 18. It is unclear how they met. “For a shy kid, the camera became both a shield and a window, a way to channel my introspection while still engaging with the world,” Ballesteros said in a statement. “Ye has always had someone filming him, too, a lens between him and the noise. Maybe that’s why we understood each other without saying much. I was able to fade into the background, stay present, the camera always rolling, catching moments outside the public performance.”

In 2022, a documentary about Ye, called Ye, was scrapped by production studio MRC over his antisemitic comments, per IndieWire. At the time, it was reported that the film had already been completed. The press release for In Whose Name? claims that Ballesteros filmed Ye for six years after “his longtime documentarian left,” so the timeline between the two documentaries is unclear. Ballesteros did direct West’s music video for “Come to Life” in 2021.

The documentary will be released nationwide in theaters on September 19, 2025. No word if Ye will tweet about it then.

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