{"id":884854,"date":"2026-09-08T20:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T20:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/884854\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T20:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T20:38:09","slug":"alex-gibney-elon-musk-documentary-unsettles-venice-at-world-premiere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/884854\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Gibney Elon Musk Documentary Unsettles Venice at World Premiere"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe world\u2019s richest man wasn\u2019t in the building \u2014 nor would the troll king ever want to be, seemingly \u2014 but Alex Gibney<\/a>\u2018s nearly four-hour documentary portrait, Musk<\/a>, nonetheless brought the house down Tuesday at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Oscar-winning director\u2019s lengthy<\/a> interrogation of Elon Musk<\/a> and the growing power he wields received a five-minute standing ovation from the appreciative crowd, with a couple of people shouting \u201cthank you,\u201d inside the Sala Grande. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe film received a very positive reception but its nearly four-hour runtime and the deeply unsettling nature of Gibney\u2019s portrayal also seemed to have exhausted the crowd.<\/p>\n

\n\tNearly four years in the making, Musk is less a straightforward biography than a relentless investigation into how its subject has accumulated such extraordinary influence over world affairs \u2014 from Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink to X and his co-pilot seat inside Donald Trump\u2019s political movement. Gibney began the project in late 2022 and believed he had finished a roughly two-hour film in late 2024 \u2014 only to keep expanding it as Musk became increasingly enmeshed in global politics. The version screening in Venice runs 225 minutes, plus a 10-minute intermission. Gibney has described the film as an attempt to pull back the curtain on the hype and mythology surrounding Musk and instead examine what the director views as an increasingly troubling concentration of unchecked power combined with dangerous impulses.<\/p>\n

\n\tMusk has been publicly attacking the project<\/a> since it was announced. After Gibney\u2019s intentions were revealed in 2023, Musk dismissed it on X as a \u201chit-piece,\u201d prompting the director to reply, \u201cHow would you know?\u201d Musk later called Gibney a \u201cdouche,\u201d to which Gibney simply responded: \u201cDouch\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGibney has built his career interrogating powerful personalities and institutions. He won the documentary feature Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, his investigation of U.S. military torture, after previously earning an Academy Award nomination for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. His subsequent targets have included Scientology in Going Clear, WikiLeaks in We Steal Secrets and Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos in The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing Venice, Musk will continue its fall festival and awards season run at the Toronto International<\/a> Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tMusk was produced by Gibney, Jessie Deeter and Erin Edeiken for Jigsaw Productions, with Zhang Xin\u2019s Closer Media, Anonymous Content and Double Agent also producing. Black Bear is handling international sales. Bleecker Street will open the film in select U.S. theaters Oct. 16 before expanding nationwide Oct. 23.<\/p>\n

\n\tMusk is screening in Venice out of competition, so it is not eligible for the Golden Lion. The documentary is one of the marquee titles in an especially strong nonfiction lineup at this year\u2019s festival, which runs through Sept. 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world\u2019s richest man wasn\u2019t in the building \u2014 nor would the troll king ever want to be,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[446681,64,63,447,3120,134,3389,391842],"class_list":["post-884854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-alex-gibney","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-elon-musk","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-venice-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}