Sundance ‘26: A Narcissist Elite Rebels Against Being ‘ALL ABOUT THE MONEY’

An extremely wealthy benefactor decides to buy up a plot of land and provide housing for a small faction of self-proclaimed communists in Alford, Massachusetts in the powerful, provocative, and infuriating documentary from Sinéad O’Shea, All About the Money. Her film begins with what should be a startling statistic—that the top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined—but we’ve become so familiar with this figure that it lacks the sting it should. Enter 0.01%-er Fergie Chambers, the heir of a long line of media billionaires, who – both accurately and ironically – believes that America’s wealth inequality is fundamentally destructive. And so the wealthy individual does something unconventional about it: a small-scale effort to oversee the function of a community that doesn’t have to worry about money.

If it sounds too good to be true—a random rich benefactor handing out homes to those who don’t believe in capitalism, paying their bills, providing them cars and a monthly stipend—it’s partially because Americans come from a fiercely individualistic society that demands citizens “pull themselves up by the bootstraps” without providing any real infrastructure to do so, something especially true in the landscape of late-stage capitalism. Also, it does (tragically) become exactly that: too good to be true.

But to start, those selected by Fergie get the kind of “free ride” that would send a Fox News correspondent into raving convulsions. Their only real assignment is to practice what they preach and act as recruiters for their anti-capitalist mindset: the system is broken and we have to work towards something structurally different. It’s a provocative idea, especially given how American capitalism entrenches class warfare, despite the fact that the interests of the masses almost always align with more equitable taxation and governance.

The rise of populist right-wing politics only further exacerbates the issue, since one of its central tenets is tax cuts to the rich and trickle-down for the rest of us. Every facet of American life props up this broken system, with public spaces driving the capitalist narrative. This is especially true of gyms, Fergie claims. He sees them as inherently filled with right-wing propaganda: American flags, support our troops banners, sign-up sheets for the Marines. So he seeks to launch a counterstrike in the form of more egalitarian, left-leaning spaces like gyms. It sounds like an unlikely plan. We soon come to know that most of his plans are.

Fergie Chambers, the heir to the Cox Enterprise media empire, is an equally unlikely figure at the center of All About the Money. A member of the inherited elite, he’s a child of media tycoons who describes his upbringing as one where his parents fundamentally weren’t there to raise him. At age 11, they had him institutionalized, a trauma that helped fuel a long drug habit. Following his upbringing, he claims his family is afraid of him and seems to relish that fact.

Despite the fortune he didn’t earn, Fergie eventually entered the family business during the recession. That brief stint was enough to spark his revolutionary awakening: even as the company raked in billions, workers’ hours and benefits were slashed. Anything to protect profit margins, even if it meant directly harming the people who relied on his family’s corporation for their livelihoods.

From that point on, he embraced agitation as a political tactic, wielding incendiary language with a kind of reckless glee. His references to Russian literature, his CCCP insignias, and his increasingly radical positions—especially in the wake of the Israel-Palestine conflict—shift him from eccentric idealist to something more volatile. He gives off a real Kendall Roy energy, if Kendall were a Marxist with neck tattoos and a jujitsu habit.

His commune members have to contend with this in real time, often by simply tuning him out. As his support for anti-Israel actions becomes more public and active, he flees the country in a state of conspiratorial suspicions, before he faces any consequences. Not long after, he converts to Islam and relocates to Tunisia, another unpredictable turn in a man already rife with contradictions.

What’s striking is how insulated Fergie remains from any actual consequences of his provocations. While he disappears overseas, some of those he funds end up facing serious jail time for their participation in protests tied to his cause. It’s a stark reminder of how privilege can allow one person to start a fire and walk away, while others are left to burn. While his former “co-conspirators” face serious jail time, he buys up a soccer league. Later, we hear him bemoaning their sorrows. In Fergie’s telling, it’s not his responsibility to pick up the pieces after them. The guy is a real piece of work.

Early on, part of me admittedly was left to wonder what the commune members do: we see them gardening, there are instruments on the gym wall but they admit they aren’t actually used (other than to record the EP of some outside indie band one time), and Fergie babbles a lot about jujitsu (we never once see any martial arts). But maybe that’s just how my brain is programmed to think: where is their productive labor? As if days filled with gardening, book club, and just maybe some jujitsu is somehow less holistic and fulfilling than a 9–5 in an office cubicle.

Maybe that thinking readjusts once you realize it really isn’t all about the money. At least not for the true-believers living in the commune. They’re trying, in earnest, to imagine a different way to live. But for Fergie, the money always mattered. It’s what gave him power, what let him play revolutionary, and what allowed him to walk away when things got inconvenient. For O’Shea’s sake, she doesn’t offer easy answers nor an easy way out for Fergie, just a sharp, sometimes surreal look at what happens when inherited privilege tries to fund radical change. Fergie may have believed in the ideals he espouses, but in the end he torches the very thing he claimed he wanted to build. It’s a fitting, if unfair, collapse and a reminder that revolutions bankrolled by narcissistic billionaires rarely have a fairy tale ending.

CONCLUSION: An alarming, hypnotic documentary about a radical, asshole 0.01%-er and the short-lived “revolutionary” lifestyle he bankrolls, only to run away when his interests shift, leaving others to carry the consequences.