‘You Can’t See Anything’: the slow rollout of Nathan Fielder’s movie is agony for foreign filmgoers

In the US and Canada, “ You Can See Everything, ” Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s meta-documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, is a box-office success , a critical darling and a word-of-mouth sensation. But foreign filmgoers, like Ilia Krasilshchik, have been experiencing a very real sense of FOMO.

When the 39-year-old Berlin resident could no longer face the flood of memes and posts about the movie on social media, he and his wife did the only thing they could think of: Left Germany, where it is not playing, and crossed the border to see it in Poland, where it is.

Driving two hours to the Polish city of Szczecin, the pair watched the movie with Polish subtitles, having gotten the idea for the trip from a friend who had made the voyage. (Others online have said they’ve done or are considering doing the same.) When the movie ended, they turned around and drove the 93 miles back, dissecting its many twists and turns on their journey home. “I love that we did it,” Krasilshchik said. “I spent two hours in the car coming back and it was like, ‘Wow. What did we just watch?! How great that we went to Poland to do this!’”

It was the first time Krasilshchik has ever traveled to another country just to watch a movie, but he felt they had little choice. “It’s impossible to watch this movie in Western Europe right now,” Krasilshchik said. “It’s just impossible.”

Photo Illustration by Leah Abucayan/CNN/Getty/The Curse Paramount+ with SHOWTIME The Rehearsal HBO Nathan For You Comedy Central/Courtesy Everett Collection You Can see Everything A24

Who is Nathan Fielder, really?

A slow foreign rollout for a movie of this type is not abnormal. Smaller films rarely open simultaneously across multiple markets at once, and it can often take months for a movie to land in international cinemas. Still, it’s been an agonizing wait for Fielder fans in foreign countries who have to wait weeks or months before they will get the chance to see it. So far, the film has only opened officially in Turkey (some cinemas in Poland, like the one Krasilshchik attended, have been holding previews), and other countries will need to wait considerable time. If you live in the UK, for example, you won’t be able to screen it until Nov. 20. France? Try Dec. 30.

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This delay has left audiences abroad doing everything they can to avoid having the film’s secrets ruined for them. “Trying to avoid spoilers online is hard, even when you know you can see it,” said Jonathan O’Brien, a 30-year-old in Melbourne, Australia, where the film won’t come out until Nov. 12. “When you know you have a month’s delay, and you have to start setting up systems to not have this thing kind of destroyed — that’s a semi-common feature of being a film lover in Australia.”

The demand for the film, both in the US and abroad, has come as something of a surprise, even to A24, the film studio behind it, given neither Fielder nor Holmes seemed like sure box-office bets, in addition to it being a nearly three-hour film about a fairly oversaturated topic. “I don’t think anyone could have predicted it,” said a source close to the studio, who asked for anonymity to speak freely about internal discussions. “You never know how the world is going to react, which is what makes this so exciting.”

The film was made in near-secret, with fewer than 10 people at the 300-person A24 aware of its existence for years, according to the Wall Street Journal , which ensured immediate buzz after its surprise unveiling at the Telluride Film Festival in early September. But that also meant the rest of A24 was operating at something of a handicap when it came to planning releases in the territories where the studio typically distributes its own pictures (Australia and the UK) or negotiating deals with distributors for other markets, which can involve conversations with exhibitors, negotiating with various countries’ ratings agencies and devising marketing plans.

“Reminder that no one in the world even knew this film existed six weeks ago,” said the studio source. “It was launched as a true surprise and delight and first of its kind. In order to keep it secret, a lot of the process for film release in other regions have just begun.”

As this process continues, O’Brien and his friends in Melbourne have resorted to muting key words on social media or trying to close their eyes as they scroll and encounter anything that looks like a potential spoiler. But O’Brien isn’t just scared that some of the movie’s surprises will be revealed to him before he gets the chance to see it. He feels an active sense that he’s missing out on being able to participate in the lively discourse around the movie. “You want to see the movie, but you also want to have seen the movie,” he said. “It’s a real sense of FOMO.” He said, “It’s like being late to the party, and everyone cool has already left.”

Online, other foreign filmgoers have bemoaned what has felt to them like an agonizingly slow rollout for a movie on everyone’s lips. “Being a cinephile outside the US,” read one viral X post that was accompanied by a poster of the film edited to read “You Can’t See Anything.” On Reddit, posts criticizing the international release schedule have received thousands of “upvotes.” Internet users have joked about staging cinema sit-ins or getting violent. “You Can See Everything unless you’re from Australia or the UK or France or Mexico or Ireland or New Zealand or the Philippines or India or,” read another X post .

The film’s domestic rollout was also staggered to build anticipation. When “You Can See Everything” began screening in the US, it was initially in some 855 theaters — a moderate number for a typical movie, but huge for a documentary. Those in states where it wasn’t showing begged for others online not to ruin the movie ahead of it finally expanding into more than 2,600 theaters on its second weekend. With the movie now vying to take the No. 1 spot at the box office, it is expanding to roughly an additional 600 theaters on Halloween weekend.

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The enormously positive reception the film has received in the US among both critics and audiences will make it easier to sell overseas, given many cinephiles will be keen to see the first documentary that seems poised to earn a best picture nomination at the Oscars. Early signs show the demand is there. In Australia, Palace Cinemas, which operates 25 cinemas across the country, reported faster single-day pre-sales for “You Can See Everything” for any film since Taylor Swift’s concert documentary on her Eras Tour, according to the source close to A24.

All this buzz led to something of a bidding war to acquire foreign distribution rights, with Sony Pictures emerging victorious to handle distribution for Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Africa, India, South Korea, Greece, Scandinavia, Germany and Austria. A Sony representative said, “Release dates are still being finalized, but given the film’s strong domestic performance and the international interest we’re seeing, we’re working to bring it to audiences across our territories as quickly as possible.” A24 has also made deals to distribute the film in other European countries, but with wildly different release windows. In Portugal, for example, the movie will screen from Nov. 12, but those in neighboring Spain will need to wait until Dec. 24, meaning some Spaniards may choose to follow Krasilshchik’s example and take a cross-country road trip.

As luck would have it, O’Brien, the Melbourne film fan, is traveling to the US next week for work and plans to finally see the movie while transiting in DC. Despite the expected jetlag, he’s not going to pass up the chance to see the movie several days before those back home can. “The moment I mentioned to my friends that that I’ll very likely go see it in America before them,” O’Brien said, “it was immediately like, ‘You better not say a goddamn thing about this.’”

A24/Courtesy Everett Collection

‘Everyone here wants to have sex with Nathan Fielder’

在美国和加拿大，内森·菲尔德和兰斯·奥本海姆执导的关于伊丽莎白·霍姆斯的元纪录片《你能看到一切》票房大卖，广受好评，口碑爆棚。但像伊利亚·克拉西尔希克这样的外国观众却深感错失良机。

当这位 39 岁的柏林居民再也无法忍受社交媒体上铺天盖地的关于这部电影的表情包和帖子时，他和妻子做了他们唯一能想到的事：离开这部电影没有上映的德国，越过边境去波兰观看这部电影，因为这部电影正在波兰上映。

两人驱车两小时前往波兰什切青市，在那里观看了一部配有波兰语字幕的电影。这次旅行的灵感来自一位曾有过类似经历的朋友。（网上也有其他人表示他们已经或正在考虑这样做。）电影结束后，他们掉头驱车93英里返回，一路上都在回味电影中跌宕起伏的情节。“我太喜欢我们这么做了，”克拉西尔希克说，“回程路上我在车里待了两个小时，一直在想，‘哇！我们刚才到底看了什么？！我们特地去波兰看这部电影真是太棒了！’”

这是克拉西尔希克第一次为了看电影而前往另一个国家，但他觉得他们别无选择。“现在在西欧根本不可能看到这部电影，”克拉西尔希克说，“绝对不可能。”

图片插图：Leah Abucayan/CNN/Getty/《诅咒》派拉蒙+与SHOWTIME联合出品，《排练》HBO出品，《内森为你》Comedy Central出品/由Everett Collection提供，《你可以看到一切》A24出品

内森·菲尔德究竟是怎样一个人？

对于这类电影来说，海外上映速度缓慢并不罕见。小成本电影很少会在多个市场同时上映，一部电影往往需要几个月的时间才能登陆国际影院。然而，对于身处海外的菲尔德影迷来说，等待的过程无疑是煎熬的，他们不得不苦等数周甚至数月才能看到这部电影。目前，该片仅在土耳其正式上映（波兰的一些影院，例如克拉西尔希克观看的那家，已经开始放映），其他国家的观众还需要等待相当长的时间。例如，如果你住在英国，最早也要等到11月20日才能看到这部电影。法国？那就得等到12月30日了。

Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

这次延期让海外观众想尽一切办法避免被剧透。“即使知道自己能看到电影，在网上避免剧透也很难，”30岁的澳大利亚墨尔本居民乔纳森·奥布莱恩说道，这部电影要到11月12日才会上映。“你知道要等一个月才能看到电影，然后你得开始想办法避免被剧透——这在澳大利亚影迷中算是比较常见的情况了。”

这部电影在美国和海外的需求都出乎意料，就连出品方A24电影公司也感到意外，毕竟菲尔德和霍姆斯似乎都不是票房保证，而且这部电影时长近三小时，题材也相当老套。“我想没人能预料到会是这样的结果，”一位接近A24的消息人士说道，他要求匿名以便畅所欲言地谈论内部讨论。“你永远无法预知世界会作何反应，而这正是这部电影如此令人兴奋的原因。”

据《华尔街日报》报道，这部电影几乎是秘密制作的，在A24公司300名员工中，多年来只有不到10人知道它的存在。9月初，该片在特柳赖德电影节上出人意料地亮相，立即引起了广泛关注。但这同时也意味着，A24的其他部门在制定影片在公司通常自行发行的地区（澳大利亚和英国）的发行计划，或与其他市场的发行商洽谈合作时，都处于某种程度的劣势。这些工作可能涉及与影院接洽、与各国评级机构谈判以及制定营销计划。

“别忘了，六周前全世界都不知道这部电影的存在，”制片方消息人士说。“它的上映完全是一次惊喜，也是史无前例的。为了保密，其他地区的发行工作才刚刚开始。”

随着这一过程的持续，奥布莱恩和他在墨尔本的朋友们不得不屏蔽社交媒体上的关键词，或者在浏览网页时尽量闭上眼睛，以免看到任何疑似剧透的内容。但奥布莱恩担心的不仅仅是电影的一些惊喜会在他有机会观看之前就被提前泄露。他强烈地感到自己错过了参与围绕这部电影的热烈讨论的机会。“你想看这部电影，但你也想自己已经看过这部电影，”他说。“这是一种真正的FOMO（害怕错过）感。” 他说，“这就像参加派对迟到了，而所有酷的人都已经离开了。”

在网上，其他外国影迷也抱怨这部备受瞩目的电影上映速度慢得令人抓狂。“身处美国以外的影迷真是太难受了，”一条在X论坛上疯传的帖子写道，帖子配图是一张经过编辑的电影海报，上面写着“你什么都看不到”。在Reddit上，批评国际发行计划的帖子获得了数千个“赞”。网友们甚至开玩笑说要组织静坐示威或者采取暴力行动。“除非你来自澳大利亚、英国、法国、墨西哥、爱尔兰、新西兰、菲律宾或印度，否则你什么都能看到，”另一条X论坛的帖子写道。

为了营造期待感，这部电影的国内上映也采用了分阶段的方式。当《你能看到一切》在美国上映之初，仅在约855家影院放映——对于一部普通电影来说，这个数字并不算大，但对于一部纪录片来说，却相当惊人。在那些尚未上映的州，人们纷纷在网上恳求其他人不要剧透，以免影响观影体验。直到第二个周末，影片才扩展到超过2600家影院。如今，这部电影正朝着票房冠军宝座发起冲击，并将在万圣节周末再增加约600家影院上映。

Cindy Ord/Getty Images

这部电影在美国获得了评论界和观众的一致好评，这将有利于其海外销售，因为许多影迷都渴望观看这部有望获得奥斯卡最佳影片提名的首部纪录片。早期迹象表明，市场需求旺盛。据一位接近A24的消息人士透露，在澳大利亚，拥有25家影院的Palace Cinemas影院表示，《你能看到一切》（You Can See Everything）的单日预售速度超过了自泰勒·斯威夫特“时代巡回演唱会”（Eras Tour）纪录片以来所有影片。

所有这些热议引发了一场争夺海外发行权的竞标战，最终索尼影业胜出，获得了拉丁美洲、中东、东南亚、南非、印度、韩国、希腊、斯堪的纳维亚半岛、德国和奥地利的发行权。索尼的一位代表表示：“上映日期仍在最终确定中，但鉴于该片在美国本土的强劲表现以及我们所看到的国际关注度，我们正在努力尽快将其带给我们覆盖区域内的观众。” A24 也已与其他欧洲国家达成发行协议，但上映窗口期差异很大。例如，该片将于11月12日在葡萄牙上映，但邻国西班牙的观众则需要等到12月24日才能观看，这意味着一些西班牙人可能会效仿克拉西尔希克，选择自驾游前往观看。

真是巧合，墨尔本影迷奥布莱恩下周要去美国出差，计划在华盛顿特区转机时观看这部电影。尽管预计会有时差反应，但他绝不会错过比家乡的影迷提前几天欣赏这部电影的机会。“当我跟朋友们说我很有可能会在美国先看到这部电影时，”奥布莱恩说，“他们立刻就说，‘你最好别跟任何人说这件事。’”

A24/由埃弗雷特收藏公司提供

“这里每个人都想和内森·菲尔德上床。”