Filmmaker Alex Gibney debuted his nearly four-hour documentary Musk at the Toronto International Film Festival, charting the billionaire’s rise while urging audiences to reclaim democratic power from tech oligarchs as the subject mounts a legal challenge against the project.
When Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney first began tracking the life of billionaire Elon Musk, the project was intended to run a standard two hours. But as the subject evolved from dot-com pioneer and corporate chief executive into a close political aide, the scope expanded dramatically. The resulting marathon film, which expands to nearly four hours following Musk’s endorsement of Donald Trump, premiered in North America at the Toronto International Film Festival after an initial bow at the Venice Film Festival.
The documentary traces a sprawling trajectory that spans decades. It follows Musk from the early dot-com era and his purchase of a $1 million McLaren through his tenure at the helm of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, a series of ventures that ultimately propelled him to the status of world’s richest person. Rather than relying solely on archival footage or outside commentary, Gibney incorporates interviews with figures from Musk’s inner circle and past, including his father, Errol Musk, former Tesla CEO Martin Eberhard, and Ashley St. Clair, a former partner and mother of one of his children.
TIFF 2026: "Musk" director wants viewers to reclaim power
Gibney framed the project not merely as a biography, but as an examination of systemic authority. This is really a film about how absolute power corrupts. Or perhaps how power reveals one's character. There's a question as to whether or not Musk was always going to go in this direction or whether the power corrupted him,
Gibney said in an interview in Toronto, as reported by Reuters. Gibney started the film before U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term and expanded its scope after Musk became a close aide of Trump. The Oscar-winning documentarian is at the Toronto International Film Festival for the North American premiere of the documentary.
A promotional teaser released for the film highlights the starkly polarized views surrounding the billionaire. In a 49-second clip posted to YouTube, commentators describe the 55-year-old entrepreneur in wildly divergent terms, calling him possibly the greatest living inventor and the real-life Iron Man, while other voices pivot to harsher labels, calling him the greatest capitalist in history,
chaotic, random, capricious, manifestly cruel and selfish,
and declaring him “a fascist” and “a nuke.”
Because Musk did not respond to Gibney’s request to an interview for the film, the documentary features a simulated interview with Musk sitting in a futuristic room with red and blue lighting, wearing a leather jacket and sporting slicked-back hair. The script for this digital avatar draws entirely from a database of public statements and comments made by Musk over the years. In certain sequences, the simulation transitions into a first-person shooter video game where the virtual avatar fires Twitter employees following the platform’s acquisition and executes federal layoffs tied to DOGE, a hallmark of the early days of the Trump administration, including at regulators that were overseeing his companies.
New Teaser Released for Four Hour Long Elon Musk
Legal Pushback and the Warning Over Tech Oligarchs
The documentary has already drawn sharp condemnation from its subject. Musk criticized Gibney on his social media platform X, calling “Musk” a “false film” and threatening to sue the filmmaker. In response to the threats, Gibney said the team has rigorously fact-checked and had a rigorous legal review. Musk, reached through SpaceX, did not respond to a request for comment.
Alex Gibney, Filmmaker
Drawing parallels to past subjects like the collapse of energy firm Enron and Scientology, Gibney argued that modern tech executives are assuming the role of villains within an ultimate pay-to-play presidency,
operating with a sense of noble cause corruption that bypasses democratic oversight and disregards federal regulations. The challenge of the film was to show the breadth of Musk’s power in the government and the unaccountability and aimlessness of that power, Gibney noted, pointing to federal layoffs and actions directed at regulators who previously oversaw Musk’s corporate entities. I hope it's the beginning of the discussion for all of us, not only citizens in the United States, but citizens of the world, to begin to take back power from these tech oligarchs who seem to be desirous of running the world for themselves,
Gibney said.
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