Teenage filmmaker Nico Ballesteros has been shadowing Ye (formerly Kanye West) since about 2019, and he’s put the last six years filming the mercurial music star into a documentary titled In Whose Name?
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A trailer for the cinematic doc surrounding the embattled Chicago native arrived on Wednesday (Aug. 13), ahead of its theater release by AMSI Entertainment, which will come on Sept. 19 in about 1,000 U.S. theaters, according to Deadline.
The raw documentary gives fans a look behind the curtain of Ye’s tailspin, triumphs and creative breakthroughs that have made him one of the most polarizing acts of the 21st century.
Kim Kardashian is featured throughout the one-minute trailer, showcasing Ye’s marriage to the reality mogul deteriorating in the late 2010s and into 2020. Kardashian filed for divorce in 2021 and the split was settled in November 2022.
“Your personality was not like this a few years ago,” Kardashian says to Ye in the clip after he admitted he’s been off his medications for five months.
West later fires back: “I would rather be dead than be on medication … Either they destroy me or I destroy it … I’m almost like a masochist … I write whatever I want when I want! It’s words!”
Directed by Ballesteros, the doc had been rumored for a while, but was not official until Wednesday. It appears the film will cover from around the Jesus Is King era in 2019 through 2024, a period which included albums such as Donda, Donda 2, Vultures and Vultures 2.
However, it’s unclear how the project will cover Ye’s string of hate speech, which resulted in the loss of brand partnerships with Gap, Balenciaga and Adidas, in addition to widespread public backlash.
“This film presents a raw and often unsettling portrait, without commentary or conclusion, leaving viewers to interpret the events for themselves,” said AMSI Entertainment’s Simran Singh in a statement to Deadline. “Nico was living alongside Ye, camera in hand, not fully knowing what he was capturing or where it would lead, and that’s exactly what makes the footage so powerful.”
Watch the trailer below.