Sinéad O'Shea: "It's a bit of a curse to have this much money, and it does blind you. I really, truly believe it corrupts the behaviour of people around you as well"

Fergie Chambers is a man of extraordinary contradictions.

An heir to the Cox media dynasty, the US political activist inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from the very capitalist system he now wants to overthrow. A committed Marxist-Leninist, he has used his fortune to fund radical political movements, communal living projects and pro-Palestinian activism, while retaining ultimate control over where his money goes.

He rails against American imperialism while defending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; speaks passionately about collective liberation while exercising the extraordinary individual power afforded by his wealth; and possesses a remarkable capacity for both self-awareness and self-delusion.

For Irish filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea, whose new documentary All About The Money follows Chambers and the activists in his orbit, it was precisely these contradictions that made him such a compelling subject.

“He’s so self-aware and insightful sometimes,” she observes. “And then he has these huge blind spots, which is like all of us, but not all of us have that amount of money. I keep resorting to this almost Catholic worldview – the idea it’s a bit of a curse to have this much money, and it does blind you. I really, truly believe it corrupts the behaviour of people around you as well.”

O’Shea sees Chambers as someone genuinely attempting to do some good, but continually undermined by the peculiar realities of his position. He rejects the notion that he deserves his inherited wealth, yet remains the person deciding how it should be distributed, reproducing the concentration of power he ostensibly opposes.

“You do live in a constant state of paradox where you resent it, but at the same time you recourse to it,” the director explains. “I think he has aspirations to be good, and he tries to be a good person. But the realities of his life keep sort of waylaying him. I do understand and agree with many of his diagnoses of what is wrong in society. But I just don’t know about the solutions.”

This complexity at the heart of Chambers is also apparent in the New England collective he funds, where young activists live communally, practise judo, study revolutionary politics and organise protests. There is something amateurish about aspects of the operation; a striking disconnect between the enormous resources available, the grand ambitions being articulated, and the apparent lack of strategic planning or consultations with experts.

However, the consequences are anything but amateur. Following a protest at Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, one activist, Paige, faces the possibility of life in prison. “It’s a really minor protest, I think,” says O’Shea, but “suddenly, people are being threatened with 30 years in jail. Which is insane.”

For the filmmaker, there were unexpected echoes of her first documentary, A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot, which explored life in a dissident republican community in Northern Ireland. “There were so many parallels,” she reflects. “You’d have people just sitting around saying quite grandiose, dramatic things, and you were thinking to yourself, ‘This is really disconnected from the reality.’ And then suddenly, someone gets shot.”

O’Shea’s film is not at all didactic, allowing questions of money, power, influence and accountability to linger knottily in its portrait of Chambers. The results have been fascinatingly divisive. At Sundance, some American viewers were angered by what they perceived as the film’s excessive empathy towards a deeply controversial figure.

Elsewhere, audiences have been more inclined to question why Chambers has faced such criticism and criminal charges, while those funding the genocide in Gaza have not.

“It actually changes from country to country, from territory to territory,” O’Shea explains. “I sometimes think the way people respond reflects the values or the cultures of those places.”
For the director, that ambiguity is precisely what makes documentary filmmaking worthwhile.

“Think for yourself, and go through it and keep being wrong-footed, as I was wrong-footed,” she says. “If you have the opportunity to make something that really is surprising, that’s great and thrilling.”
Perhaps the film’s most remarkable irony emerged during its production. Chambers objected to the documentary, believing it to not be political enough, and offered O’Shea a substantial sum to prevent its release. Asked whether the money would have been life-changing, she confirms that it would.

“But it also would have been such a nightmare,” she says. “The whole point of me and documentary making was that you’re observing all this, and it would have been really, I thought, immoral.”
O’Shea is keen to acknowledge that Chambers eventually agreed to the film’s release, despite possessing the resources to potentially obstruct it through litigation.

“He could have tied me up in the courts for years, and that was a real possibility at one point,” she says. “And he chose not to. I actually really respect and like him for that.”

• All About The Money is in cinemas now.