Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes documentary hit with R rating by the MPA

Besides opening up the opportunity for people to reference that one Patrick Stewart Extras bit even more than they already were, the rating caught people’s attention by highlighting just how little we actually know about the A24-produced movie, which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this month, but which won’t be available to the public to watch until October 16. The trailer, released yesterday, gives at least some hints at what Oppenheim and Fielder have cooked up here, as they spent an extended period following Holmes and her family around with a camera in the period immediately before her incarceration in 2023—including highlighting their decision to put Fielder’s own interactions with Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, in front of the camera.

Reviews of the film, from those who saw it at Telluride, describe it in glowing terms, highlighting its complicated relationship with both its famous subject and the truth at large. But it’s still a little surprising to hear that the end result of all this documentary filmmaking is “graphic” enough to shunt what seems to be a documentary largely built around awkward conversations into R territory in the MPA’s eyes. (Reviews note that the three-month period where Fielder and Oppenheim filmed Holmes and Evans most closely took place immediately after she gave birth to her second child, which makes us wonder if that’s not the source of the complaints; the MPA has been criticized by artists for treating footage of things like birth as R-rating-worthy material in the past.)