The Toronto International Film Festival’s documentary czar feels confident about taking on Elon Musk.
On Wednesday, the 2026 edition of TIFF unveiled its documentary films slate, consisting of 21 doc titles from around the world, and one film stood out for the controversy — and Twitter tantrums — it will surely spark: “Musk,” Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour documentary probing the world’s richest man and most incendiary culture warrior.
Gibney, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who’s investigated dirty corporations (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”), sexual abuse coverups in the Catholic Church (“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God”), Scientology (“Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Disbelief”) and alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election (“Agents of Chaos”), has been working on his Musk documentary since 2023, which Musk called “a hit piece” sight unseen. Even though the world’s first trillionaire is highly litigious, Thom Powers, TIFF’s documentary programmer since 2006, has faith in Gibney to deliver the goods.
“Alex Gibney is no stranger to controversial topics. He’s taken on Scientology in ‘Going Clear.’ He’s earned a reputation as someone who operates with the utmost journalistic integrity and is going to be thoroughly vetted by a team of the best lawyers in the world,” Powers tells Variety. “That is something that gives us a lot of confidence. We had a film produced by Alex at the festival a couple of years ago, ‘The Bibi Files,’ that raised similar concerns. You may remember that Benjamin Netanyahu went to an Israeli court to try to stop that film and the court said, we have no jurisdiction here, case dismissed.”
