Coming to the Venice Film Festival this week is Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning documentary-maker responsible for the eagerly anticipated two-part investigation into the life of Elon Musk. Not yet released in the U.S. Musk is a 232-minute, in-competition documentary that promises to delve almost four hours into the life of one of this century’s most magnanimous and controversial personalities. Gibney wrapped filming nearly four years ago.
He initially pitched the film in 2023 as, a comprehensive and unvarnished look at the Tesla and SpaceX founder. It took longer to make as current events kept changing the narrative. Elon Musk’s promotion of Donald Trump, his quick stint running government efficiency initiatives, and the expanding reach of his various businesses drew the director back into the editing room after a 2025 cut. The final product now charts a career that has far surpassed EVs and rockets, and extends into social media, AI, and politics.
The director has been very honest about his point of departure. Gibney had owned a Tesla at some point and started out with a certain fascination. He had ideas about a one-on-one interview with Musk for the film. That interview never came off. Instead, the team ended up speaking with hundreds of people on and off the record. What resulted, Gibney said, reinforces the popular perception of Musk as a forward-thinking Leonardo da Vinci-type innovator; but, in his estimation, research finds we are dealing with an extremely talented con man who has parlayed brilliance, timing and abnormally hard work into incredible power. Musk has even spoken for himself. When the story broke that there was a documentary in the works he called it a “hit piece” on his Facebook page.
Gibney’s one-word response was equally cryptic “How would you know?”. The exchange encapsulates the tension that has followed the project from its inception. When Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera announced the lineup and nominated the film that would become “Steve Jobs” he acknowledged the “unusual length of the film” by jokingly told viewers to “brace themselves for four hours of really close scrutiny of one man and his power”. Following its Venice debut, the doc will come to U.S. cinemas on October 16 in Bleecker Street. HBO Documentary Films possess North American television and srtreaming rights. This guarantees the film will have an audience beyond the festival run.
Black Bear sole handles international sales. The film is a collaboration of Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions and several partners: Closer Media, Double Agent and Anonymous Content. Four hours should be an almost unachievable length for any filmmaker on any subject. But the topic appears to merit the treatment.
Musk’s various companies span the worlds of transport space power generation, communication, and government policy. The persona of Musk himself has become intertwined with the technological innovations he promotes and the investigations and pushes-back that around him. Gibney’s prior films on Enron, the Catholic church, and other power institutions have demonstrated a depth and breadth of exploration of systems and characters that supprots their mythologies. This time Musk presents a challenge only as broad as the scale of Musk’s own aspirations.
