James Cox Chambers, who goes by Fergie Chambers, is the “son of one of America’s wealthiest families creates a Communist revolutionary base in rural Massachusetts as a means of disrupting the capitalist system he grew up in, but has now come to despise,” reads a synopsis for All About the Money, Irish director Sinéad O’Shea‘s new documentary, world premiering in the World Cinema Documentary Competition of the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, Jan. 25. “It’s the starting point of an astonishing journey,” which includes much soul-searching, as well as controversies.
The doc takes audiences to a Marxist-Leninist collective in Massachusetts, which Chambers funded, follows his attempts to bring an “activist” and “revolutionary” spirit to the country, his decision to cash out of his stake in the family empire, his move abroad, and shows him talking about the power and limits of money.
The Sundance website calls the film “a fascinating study of the power money has to make and destroy, and what access to astronomical wealth does to a person and those around him. All About the Money is a documentary for our times of concentrated wealth and power, and the dream of creating another world while still being mired in this one.”
Chambers’ great-grandfather was James M. Cox, the former governor of Ohio and the Democratic presidential nominee in 1920. As such, Chambers is a member of one of the richest U.S. families, whose holdings include cable giant Cox Communications’s parent company, Cox Enterprises.
O’Shea (Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story, Pray for Our Sinners, A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot) wrote and directed the doc, while also serving as a producer along with Claire McCabe, Harry Vaughn, Katie Holly, and Sigrid Dyekjær. SOS Productions and Real Lava are co-producers of All About the Money.
THR can now debut an exclusive clip from All About the Money, in which Chambers talks about how he approaches funding decisions and answers the question of whether he worries about running out of money. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t.
Check out the All About the Money clip below to follow his math and find out why Chambers says that “it’s so easy to make money” – at least, in his circles.
