Enron collapses in late 2001 after years of accounting fraud that made it look like America's most innovative energy company. Alex Gibney builds the film around Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind's book of the same name, tracing how CEO Jeffrey Skilling's mark-to-market accounting let Enron book projected future profits as current earnings, and how CFO Andrew Fastow hid billions in debt inside off-book partnerships. Recorded phone calls from Enron traders during the California energy crisis catch them joking about shutting down power plants and gouging "Grandma Millie," while blackouts hit real households. Interviews with former employees, Wall Street analysts, and reporters sit alongside deposition footage of Skilling and chairman Kenneth Lay, plus archival tape of Lay reassuring staff and investors weeks before the stock went to zero. Thousands of employees lost their retirement savings while executives cashed out stock in advance. The film treats the collapse as a case study in how a culture that rewarded aggression and punished dissent, reinforced by accountants and bankers who kept signing off, let the fraud run for years before anyone outside the company noticed.