Why Elizabeth Holmes Still Fascinates America: A New Documentary Explains

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the failed blood-testing startup Theranos, is the subject of a new documentary that has renewed public interest in why her case continues to draw attention more than a decade after her company collapsed. "You Can See Everything," directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim and distributed by A24, had its US theatrical release in mid-October 2026. The film's Wikipedia entry gives the date as October 16, 2026, while WBUR's review states the film opened October 15, 2026; the two sources differ by a day.

What the documentary actually shows

The filmmakers lived with Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, for 34 days at a beach house in Del Mar, California, in the weeks before Holmes reported to the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, in 2023, according to WBUR and the Wikipedia summary of the production. The 174-minute film was shot over what turned into a three-year process, and Fielder — originally meant to stay behind the camera — ends up appearing on screen after his interactions with Holmes became part of the story, per the same sources.

According to WBUR's review, Holmes maintains throughout the film that she never lied, responds to questions with what the reviewer called "tortured wordplay," and holds unbroken eye contact that the critic described as feeling "like an act of aggression." The review also notes that Evans continues pursuing a new medical-device venture, which the piece refers to as "Theranos 2.0," during the filming.

The second half of the film shifts into reenactments and shifting points of view, a structure WBUR compares to Orson Welles' 1973 film "F for Fake." The documentary closes on the line, as quoted by WBUR: "We can see everything, and it will never be enough."

The underlying fraud case

Theranos claimed its devices could run hundreds of medical tests from a few drops of blood. A federal jury convicted Holmes in January 2022 of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud tied to more than $140 million in investor transfers; she was acquitted of charges related to defrauding patients, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.

In November 2022, US District Judge Davila sentenced Holmes to 135 months — 11 years and 3 months — in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. She reported to prison in April 2023. Her former deputy and former partner, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, was tried separately and sentenced to 155 months, according to the Northern District of California prosecutors' case summary.

Why the story keeps resurfacing

Writing for NPR, critic Linda Holmes (via KQED) argued that the case fascinates because Elizabeth Holmes persuaded sophisticated investors to back a product that did not work, in what the piece called a "Magic Beans" dynamic — people invested partly because other prominent people already had. The same article notes that Forbes once listed her as the youngest self-made female billionaire before revising her net worth to zero within a year, since the wealth had never actually existed.

That reversal, paired with Holmes's continued insistence that her technology worked and that she never lied, is why commentators keep returning to her case: it combines a dramatic rise and fall with a subject whose own account of events remains contested even after a federal conviction.

A recurring subject in film and TV

"You Can See Everything" is not the first screen treatment of the Theranos story. Hulu's limited series "The Dropout," starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes, premiered in March 2022, according to KQED's account of Holmes's pop-culture footprint. Seyfried also appears in the new A24 documentary, both as herself and in character, according to the film's Wikipedia page.

• Directors: Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim
• Distributor: A24; US theatrical release mid-October 2026 (Wikipedia gives October 16, 2026; WBUR gives October 15, 2026)
• Runtime: 174 minutes
• Filmed over 34 days before Holmes's 2023 prison surrender, released after roughly three years of production