The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

Elizabeth Holmes arrived in Silicon Valley with a revolutionary medical invention. She called it “the Edison”: a small, hyper-sophisticated black box that performed 200 tests in minutes, all from a single drop of blood. Needles, laboratories, and the select few companies that controlled them would become instantly obsolete. Like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Thomas Edison himself, Holmes intended to tear down and revolutionize an entire industry. The hitch? All of it was a lie. The system was a hoax. And what began as one of 2014’s hottest tech companies - valued at nine billion dollars - dissolved into a fraudulent, bankrupt scheme that exposed Silicon Valley’s underbelly. The Inventor investigates how Holmes deceived backers as influential as Henry Kissinger and James Mattis, but it also reveals the long-standing American practice of scientific fakery and performance: numerous inventors (including Edison himself) have publicly proclaimed breakthroughs before they actually invented what they boasted about. Master filmmaker Alex Gibney boldly takes on the great myths surrounding America’s entrepreneurial elites at a time when tech titans have never looked so vulnerable to their own hubris. (Sundance Film Festival)