All About the Money: In The U.S., Even Communists are Split by Class

Sundance Film Review: All About the Money
Director: Sinéad O’Shea
Albert Media Group
Premiere: 01.25.2026

Even a cursory search of Fergie Chambers brings up some fascinating results. The heir to the Cox Enterprise, his fortune is self-reported in the hundreds of millions. Marked as a problem child from a young age, he bounced in and out of mental and rehab institutions until finally finding what he considers his calling in life: Communism.

As a strong proponent for armed revolution, he’s a polarizing figure, often finding himself in hot water for controversial social media posts. By his own admission, he has a strong personality and doesn’t expect everyone to get along with him — not even his own family. “I’m sick of this American idea of politics being cordial,” he says.

Chambers found an intersection of his interests by first creating gyms that catered to leftists, a culture that he astutely points out has almost always been populated with right-wingers. This is roughly where director Sinead O’Shea enters, following Chambers with a camera for a few pivotal years as he tries to dedicate his resources to leftist movements.

Sinéad O’Shea’s direction is participatory, with her speaking directly from behind the camera to her subjects on screen. It’s quite effective, as she doesn’t shy from asking the tough questions. The film is at its most engaging when O’Shea is directly and intimately confronting her subjects. That said, much of the film is tied together by text interstitials that aren’t quite as emotionally effective, even if they do help move the story along.

It all begins in Alton, Massachusetts, where Chambers bought up large tracts of property, allowing anyone who identified as a communist to live on the property completely free of charge, so long as they took care of the place and dedicated timing to learning about communist theory. Ultimately he sees this commune as a “training school for revolutionaries.”

A spark is lit within Chambers following the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and he, along with some of his followers, take direct action by vandalizing and barring entrance to an Elbit Systems facility (a company that has armed Israel with many of their weapons). This ends up drawing a lot of heat to Chambers and he flees to Tunisia to lay low for a while. While there, he (temporarily) converts to Islam and buys up a soccer club that was on the verge of going bankrupt.

This stands in stark contrast to one of the commune members, Paige, who stays behind in Massachusetts, having to serve prison time for her involvement at Elbit. She harbors resentment towards Chambers as his money allows him to flee the country, a luxury she could never afford. 

There’s a particularly striking moment where Chambers and his wife vent to each other about the “ingrates” in Massachusetts continually expecting money from him, as he eats shrimp in his private booth at a soccer match. That said, he did end up paying for all of Paige’s legal fees, and even gave her a severance package to find a life after the closing of the commune in Alton. 

It’s these kinds of contradictions that make Chambers such a fascinating subject. As a communist that is part of the top .01%, Fergie Chambers is at least partially aware of his contradictions, stating multiple times that he knows he’s only where he is in life because he’s always had the privilege of money.

But this is hardly surprising; the United States is a nation built upon contradictions. Even from its inception, it adopted the mantra “all men are created equal” while still instituting slavery. It’s a nation that claims to be morally just and good while bombing and invading more countries than any other. Perhaps it is for this reason that countless Marxist movements have struggled to stick in the United States over the last century. There’s a running joke that no one hates leftists more than other leftists, which is awfully tricky for a political system that relies entirely upon solidarity.

And yet, the work still moves on. Even with her personal falling out with Chambers, Paige swears that once she is out of prison, she will find other ways to resist from within the imperial core. But she says that she will never again rely upon a rich benefactor to help her. As she puts it, “a movement like this should be coming from the bottom, not the top.” Even with the best of intentions, can a rich man really make a good communist? After all, the film’s final bumper reveals that Chambers tried to pay O’Shea to not release this film once he saw it. —Seth Turek

Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.