“Musk,” an incisive four-hour documentary probing the world’s richest man, was embraced at Venice Film Festival with a four-minute standing ovation.
Despite the lengthy runtime, audiences inside Lido’s famed Palazza del Cinema seemed enraptured in the film, directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, with one person in the crowd shouting “Thank you!” after the applause died down. (The claps and cheers might have lasted longer, but attendees were desperate to stretch their legs and get some fresh air after one of the longer movies at the festival.) Gibney was joined at the premiere by two interview subjects in the documentary, Ashley St. Clair, an influencer who was in a relationship with Musk and gave birth last year to his 13th child, and tech journalist Zoë Schiffer.
At a press conference before the premiere, Gibney joked he didn’t set out to make such a long movie. “We intended to make a shorter film before Musk became wrapped in the career of Donald Trump and the United States,” Gibney said.
Gibney, who has investigated corrupt 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”), started working on his Musk documentary — which his subject has called “a hit piece” sight unseen — in 2023.
