Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk Documentary Premieres at Venice to Five-Minute Ovation

Alex Gibney’s documentary “Musk” had its world premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival. Elon Musk was not present at the screening.

The audience in the Sala Grande gave the film a five-minute standing ovation, with several people shouting thanks. The nearly four-hour runtime and the unsettling tone of Gibney’s portrait also appeared to leave parts of the crowd exhausted.

225 minutes on Musk’s power

The film took nearly four years to make. Gibney began work in late 2022 and thought he had completed a roughly two-hour version in late 2024, but continued expanding it as Musk became more deeply involved in global politics.

The Venice cut runs 225 minutes, plus a 10-minute intermission. Rather than a conventional biography, it examines Musk’s influence through Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink and X, as well as his role in Donald Trump’s political movement.

Gibney has described the project as an effort to look past the mythology surrounding Musk and examine what the director sees as a dangerous concentration of unchecked power.

Musk’s public attacks on the project

Musk has criticized the documentary since its announcement. In 2023, he called it a “hit-piece” on X; Gibney questioned how Musk could know that, and later answered a personal insult from Musk with a pun.

Gibney won the documentary feature Oscar for “Taxi to the Dark Side” and was previously nominated for “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.” His later subjects included Scientology, WikiLeaks and Theranos.

After Venice, “Musk” will continue through the fall festival and awards-season circuit, including the Toronto International Film Festival. Bleecker Street will release it in select U.S. theaters October 16, followed by a nationwide expansion October 23.