Nathan Fielder Defends 'You Can See Everything' as Oscar Doc Branch Faces Heat

You Can See Everything has grossed nearly $50 million, and on Wednesday at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival its co-director Nathan Fielder had to explain, for the first time, why the film's techniques still count as documentary. The setting was The Hollywood Reporter's Docs to Watch panel, where Fielder sat with nine other directors of top 2026 documentaries — and where the branch that decides the best documentary feature Oscar nominees came under direct criticism from two of its own members.

Fielder, who co-directed the Elizabeth Holmes documentary with Lance Oppenheim, shared the stage with Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (Everest: Other Side), Rory Kennedy (The Trial of Alec Baldwin), Amir Bar-Lev (The Last First: Winter K2), Julia Loktev (My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile), David Greaves (Once Upon a Time in Harlem), Poh Si Teng (American Doctor), Jack MacInnes (One in a Million), Alysa Nahmias (Cookie Queens) and Ron Howard (Avedon).

The moderator noted what the record shows: the Academy's documentary branch, which alone determines the documentary feature Oscar nominees, has in recent years passed over celebrity-driven, widely released and financially successful docs. The list of snubs runs from Won't You Be My Neighbor and Jane through Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, American Symphony, Will & Harper and Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry. The branch has also resisted docs with adventurous techniques, including reenactments — Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell being a recent casualty.

The timing sharpens the question. You Can See Everything posted the highest-grossing opening weekend from fewer than 1,000 locations since 2006's Borat, and the best for a documentary since 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11. Audiences are moving toward exactly the kinds of films the branch tends to exclude.

What did branch members say on stage?

Amir Bar-Lev, a longtime documentary branch member, argued the branch's definition of truth is too narrow. He invoked Werner Herzog's Minnesota Manifesto: verite films carry a reputation for truthfulness, but Herzog calls that "the truth of the Yellow Pages... an actuarial truth, it's not ecstatic truth." Bar-Lev continued: "You can get at ecstatic truth with reenactments, playing to the camera, all these different techniques... And to just say, 'Because I didn't edit something, and I just aimed the camera,' that's not necessarily any more truthful. And it's a pity that the doc branch is narrow-minded at times."

He added a structural point about the award itself: "It's an Oscar for a film, not for an issue... It's supposed to be about technique and craft." Addressing Fielder directly, he said the film's success matters "because I think it pushes the boundaries, and we all learn from it."

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi — a branch member who won the 2018 best documentary feature Oscar for Free Solo — went further, comparing the film's formal choices to Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing: "The constraints became the opportunity, right? And that's formal innovation, and that's what was awesome — like The Act of Killing, one of the greatest formal innovations in nonfiction." She also described the film's box office pull in person: "In Manhattan last weekend, you couldn't get a seat to see your film!... It was kind of like the most beautiful moment ever in nonfiction."

How did Fielder answer the technique question?

Fielder's defense rested on intent, not experimentation. He said he and Oppenheim did not set out to make an unconventional doc: "The only reason we started including these other things [such as reenactments] was because it felt dishonest not to. We'd actually be hiding things from the viewer if we didn't let them in on what we knew or what we observed."

He framed the camera's presence as an unavoidable distortion every documentarian shares: "When you're in the room with cameras, it's not the same as if you weren't in the room with cameras — you're part of the story, and the person is acting a certain way because of you and the camera, regardless of if you acknowledge it or not." He and Oppenheim built the film by asking what information the viewer needed "to try to make sense of this in the way we are."

He closed with a boundary claim and a modest ask: "I don't know, really, what makes something not a doc; I know what it would be if we didn't do those things: it would just be a less honest version of what the story was." If the film's success changes anything, he said, he hopes it means "people are excited about docs and want to see docs in theaters."

What does this change for the race?

Two voting branch members have now publicly criticized their own branch's taste, on the record, during the 2026 qualifying season. That does not change any rule — the branch's voting process remains untouched — but it changes the pressure around it. A near-$50M gross plus internal dissent makes You Can See Everything a live test of whether the branch rewards craft it has historically rejected. The nominations will answer that.