‘Musk’ director wants viewers to reclaim power from ‘tech oligarchs’

Filmmaker Alex Gibney made his marathon documentary Musk , about the vast influence of billionaire Elon Musk , to prompt discussions about reclaiming power from “tech oligarchs”, he said in an interview on Sunday.

The Oscar-winning documentarian is at the Toronto International Film Festival for the North American premiere of the documentary. Gibney started the film before US President Donald Trump’s second term and expanded its scope after Musk became his close aid The film was initially two hours long but was extended to nearly four hours after Musk endorsed Trump, the filmmaker said.

“I hope it’s the beginning of the discussion for all of us, not only citizens in the US, 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.

The documentary charts Musk’s path from the dotcom era, his purchase of a $1m (R16.2m) McLaren, his rise as CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and social platform Twitter (now X) that made him the world’s richest person. The documentary also features interviews with his father Errol Musk, former Tesla CEO Martin Eberhard and Ashley St Clair, Musk’s former partner and mother of one of his many children.

“This is 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.

Musk has criticised Gibney on X, calling Musk a “false film” and threatening to sue the filmmaker. 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.

Gibney, whose previous subjects have included the collapse of energy ‌firm Enron ⁠and Scientology, said tech CEOs were becoming villains in an “ultimate pay-to-play presidency”, disregarding federal regulations and amassing influence that diminishes the role of democratic oversight.

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 said. “That to me was the most concerning.”

Musk did not respond to Gibney’s request for an interview for the film, the filmmaker said. Instead, it features a simulated interview with Musk in a leather jacket, hair slicked back and sitting in a leather chair in a futuristic room with red and blue lighting. The simulated character’s script is based on a database of Musk’s statements and comments made in public.

In some sequences, the simulation changes to a first-person shooter video game with Musk playing the game, firing Twitter employees after his acquisition of the social media platform and federal layoffs made by the US department of government efficiency, a hallmark of the early days of the Trump administration, including at regulators who were overseeing his companies.

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and will be on screen later this year.