In Whose Name? offers a rare, unvarnished portrait of Kanye West during a six-year span, compiled from roughly 3,000 hours of footage into a 106-minute film. Directed by first-time filmmaker Nico Ballesteros, the unauthorized documentary follows West from 2018 through 2024, with most filming done on iPhones. The film captures the rapper amid a public struggle with bipolar disorder, the unraveling of his marriage to Kim Kardashian, and the fallout from his antisemitic remarks in 2022.
It features a wide array of archival moments and cameos, including footage with Lady Gaga, Drake, LeBron James, Chris Rock, Diddy, Rihanna, Virgil Abloh and Justin Bieber, illustrating West’s pre-fall ascendancy as a global icon and chart-topping artist. The film also revisits the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards moment when West interrupted Taylor Swift, a scene that is framed as part of a longer arc about culture and the price of fame.
In one of the film’s most quoted segments, Pharrell Williams warns West about how a single misstep could derail his life and career. In a 2018 studio chat captured for the project, West stands as Williams, seated, cautions that public misfires can cascade into lost deals and waning support. The exchange shows Williams telling West that “one f—ked up facet” could undermine the whole entity and urges care in pacing and messaging.
The documentary then turns to a tense backstage clash with Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che after West served as the show’s musical guest in 2018. Che confronts West about an on-air remark and the pair have a pointed, filmed exchange in Ballesteros’ footage. West later defends his stance, saying he has “some things against SNL,” a moment that the filmmaker preserves as a snapshot of a culture clash inside a broader political moment.
Kris Jenner is also shown in a heated exchange about medication and mental health. In a raw scene, West loudly notes that he would “rather be dead than be on medication,” prompting Jenner to respond with care and concern about his well-being and the impact of online scrutiny on the family. The sequence underscores the pressures inside a high-profile household when treatment and public perception collide.
Archive footage shows the Kardashian-West marriage strain stretching back to 2018, years before Kardashian filed for divorce in 2021 and their divorce was finalized in 2022. The film shows a trip to Chicago after a White Sox game and an incident in Uganda during 2018 in which West reflects publicly on his relationships and public narratives. Kardashian is filmed crying during a confrontation, as West acknowledges lapses in his medication that complicate home life and family dynamics.
Ballesteros’ documentary emphasizes how West’s behavior and the backlash that followed shaped corporate deals with Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and more, but it deliberately eschews dwelling on the most incendiary moments of the later period in favor of West’s responses to the fallout.
The film recalls West’s October 2018 drive to the Capitol, a sequence that includes a call to Jared Kushner in which West tries to map an approach that would mirror a foreign dignitary’s path, insisting he be treated with respect as part of his bid for attention on national-stage optics. The footage adds texture to a broader narrative about West’s political ambitions and the risk calculus around celebrity activism.
One of the documentary’s most talked-about moments unfolds in 2022 after a show in Miami when Elon Musk, then dating West’s wife Kim Kardashian’s rival Grimes, appears in a candid exchange about their personal lives. Musk jokes about the complexity of his own relationships and the two men spar briefly in a scene that ends with Musk waving goodbye as West and an entourage depart. The film notes that this is not the only Musk clip Ballesteros shot, but it is the one included in the release.
Ballesteros says he first crossed paths with Musk at a 2018 party at West’s Calabasas home, and the director’s camera followed the moment when Musk wandered into the frame, a signal of how the film tracks a culture in flux as much as a single artist’s saga.
Another striking inclusion is a 2018 appearance by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who is shown alongside West and Candace Owens. Kirk would be killed later that year in a separate event, an element the director says the film preserves to reflect how history can intersect with contemporaneous culture. Owens reappears later in the film during West’s 2022 Paris Fashion Week moment, but the documentary minimizes the later political controversy by focusing on audience reactions and West’s response to backlash.
In the filmmaking choice that Ballesteros frames as “changing with history,” the documentary’s final act centers on how West handles public backlash and the breakdown of his business relationships, rather than the specifics of any one incident. In Whose Name? premieres in select theaters on Sept. 19, 2025, with a limited rollout as it continues to travel to audiences seeking a behind-the-scenes view of a difficult era for a major cultural figure.
