The intimate, often shocking film ‘In Whose Name?’ provides a raw look at the mental health struggles and explosive behavior that fractured one of America’s most famous couples.
For years, the world watched the saga of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West play out in the blinding glare of the public spotlight. Many dissected and speculated about Kanye’s increasingly controversial public statements and political antics as the catalyst for their divorce in 2022. Now, a groundbreaking new documentary, ‘In Whose Name?’, promises to take viewers behind the headlines and into the private turmoil that ultimately led to the split, featuring an exclusive and heartbreaking warning from Kardashian to her then-husband.
Directed by a then-18-year-old Nico Ballesteros, the film is a mammoth undertaking, whittling down over 3,000 hours of footage shot between 2018 and 2024. It attempts to chart the throughline of Kanye West’s—or Ye’s—life during a period of immense creative output and profound personal chaos. While Ye himself declares the project to be about mental health, the documentary ultimately paints a portrait of a polarizing figure so consumed by his hubris and unmedicated bipolar disorder that he systematically pushes away his closest allies, including the woman who fought tirelessly to ground him.
The Warning Heard ‘Round the World
The documentary’s most revealing moment comes in the form of a private phone call between Ye and Kim Kardashian, following one of his many political controversies in 2018. The audio, which is played in the film, captures a voice rarely heard on their reality show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians: a Kim who is exhausted, desperate, and at her wit’s end.
“I can’t sleep. I’ve been crying all day. It’s just this terrible dream that’s not ending,” she tells him, her voice strained with emotion. She articulates the core fear of everyone in Ye’s orbit: “You’re losing… everyone around you… You’re going to wake up one day and you’re gonna have, like, nothing.”
This chilling prophecy seems to have foreshadowed their eventual divorce, which Kim had previously hinted at on her Hulu show, The Kardashians. In a conversation with her sister Khloé, she spoke about the pain of watching someone change into a person you no longer recognize.
“That’s the hardest part,” she said. “When you don’t foresee a significant change in someone’s personality, it can be devastating because they become unrecognizable, and you feel unable to accept the new version of them.” I get it.”
The Central Issue: Bipolar Disorder and Refusal to Medicate
The documentary reinforces what has long been reported: that Ye’s refusal to stay on his medication for his publicly disclosed bipolar disorder was a primary source of tension. The film shows him declaring that being off his meds makes him feel “like himself,” even as his behavior becomes more erratic and explosive.
‘In Whose Name?’ doesn’t shy away from showing the real-world impact of this choice. Viewers see a shocking, full-throated tirade against Kris Jenner over the medication issue that leaves her in tears. In another scene, filmed in Uganda, he suddenly screams “Fuck you!” at his cousin for a minor suggestion, commanding her to sit down in a display of control that Kim later calls “not normal.”
It is in these moments that Kim emerges as the film’s most rational and tragic figure. We see her acting as a buffer, attempting to manage the fallout. She comforts his crying cousin after the Uganda outburst, offering a tissue and a moment of shared understanding. When she attempts to reason with Ye, asserting that his personality was different a few years prior, he merely responds, “But that’s my personality!”
A Frustrating Portrait of a “Tortured Genius”
While the access is undeniable, the documentary is reviewed as an intimate yet frustrating look inside Ye’s world. For all its footage—including scenes at the White House with Donald Trump, Sunday Services, and an awkward chat with Elon Musk—the film struggles to find a coherent narrative beyond a linear timeline of chaos.
The director, Nico Ballesteros, had unprecedented access, yet the film often feels like a series of “antics,” just as Ye feared it would. We see few people—beyond figures like Swizz Beatz and Michael Che, who confront him on camera—willing to genuinely push back against his whims. The result is a maddening cycle of self-aggrandizement (declaring “I am Picasso” to a room of architects) and self-sabotage.
The epilogue reveals the consequences Kim Kardashian warned him about: AEG and Live Nation won’t offer him a tour, Las Vegas’ Sphere won’t return his calls, and his monumental deals with Adidas and Gap are ashes. However, in true Ye fashion, he looks into the camera and declares the self-destruction was worth it.
‘In Whose Name?’ doesn’t provide easy answers. Instead, it offers a raw, unfiltered, and often distressing window into the mental health struggles and erratic behavior that cost Kanye West his marriage and much of his career. It reveals Kim Kardashian not as a reality star seeking fame, but as a wife who endured until she couldn’t, issuing a warning that, in the end, proved tragically accurate.
