Copyright Variety
A potentially explosive doc titled “Elon Musk Unveiled – The Tesla Experiment” is set to launch from the upcoming IDFA documentary festival in Amsterdam, where its Nov. 16 premiere will be attended by several former Tesla employees, insiders and whistleblowers who spoke out. “I had a moral obligation to tell the world what is really going on behind the curtain,” says former Tesla autopilot employee John Bernal in the doc’s trailer, which Variety is launching exclusively (watch above). “Elon Musk Unveiled” “pulls back the curtain on Musk’s empire, as close confidants, whistleblowers, victims and former high-ranking Tesla employees speak out,” says the doc’s logline. “Their testimonies expose hidden data and buried defects in the race for self-driving cars — where unchecked ambition costs lives and challenges Big Tech’s most powerful titan.” “For the very first time, we get a really close insight of how Tesla works and how Elon Musk is managing his company,” producer Christian Beetz, CEO of Beetz Brothers, tells Variety. After he launches “Elon Musk Unveiled” on the European festival circuit, Beetz is very keen to also bring the doc to U.S. audiences. Produced by Germany’s Beetz Brothers and directed by Andreas Pichler (“The Milk System”), “Tesla Experiment” takes its cue from 100GB of leaked internal data provided by a whistleblower named Lukasz Krupski, who worked for Tesla in Norway, to German business newspaper Handelsblatt. The “Tesla Experiment” weaves three interconnected narratives. The first one is a storyline “that examines Musk’s grip on Tesla and his transformation from tech entrepreneur to political strategist,” according to promotional materials. The second is “victim stories, which focus on personal tragedies caused by Tesla’s autopilot, contrasting Musk’s grand technological ambitions with the real suffering of those left behind.” And the third delves into investigations into Musk following journalists and lawyers uncovering the inner workings of Tesla through leaked data and “revealing a pattern of cover-ups, regulatory evasion, and a growing entanglement between Musk’s empire and political power,” the materials say. “It’s a good thing that there are people like Musk who have this ‘move fast, break things mentality’ which aims to bring new ideas and innovation into our societies,” said Anne Von Petersdorff, an executive producer on the doc. “But of course, there’s a risk. And in this case, people are dying for this technology because they are testing the technology on our streets.” “Elon Musk Unveiled – The Tesla Experiment” is a Beetz Brothers film production in coproduction with HR, SWR, WDR and NDR for German broadcaster ARD and Comcast-owned pay-TV service Sky, and in collaboration with Handelsblatt. The high-profile doc is being sold by Mediawan Rights, the sales unit of European media conglomerate Mediawan. Mediawan owns Germany’s Leonine Studios that, in turn, owns Beetz Brothers.
