The improbable tale of the irreverent subredditors who took on Wall Street at the height of the pandemic – and caused a financial sensation.

It was an episode so unhinged that it seemed to capture the chaos of the moment: in January 2021, mere weeks after rioters stormed the US Capitol, an army of amateur investors – egged on by billionaire iconoclast Elon Musk – attempted to take down Wall Street. This renegade community put the squeeze on hedge funds and drove the stock price of besieged bricks-and-mortar retailer GameStop to absurd, astronomical highs, thus forming part of a David-and-Goliath battle that exposed the market’s slippery, largely arbitrary notions of value.

Fresh from SXSW, this captivating documentary from Emmy Award–winning directors Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari (Flint Town) unpacks the events that gave rise to this tumultuous fiscal Wild West, delving into the notorious subreddit WallStreetBets with a rogues’ gallery of stock-market speculators, crackpot chancers and would-be rebels who sought to democratise trading – before the system eventually crushed them. Delivered in an antic rush of GIFs, memes and EDM beats, Diamond Hands is a funny, provocative and sometimes despairing film for our times.

“While the fix may always be in, it’s stories like these, the glimpse of that shimmering matrix, the wizard shoes sticking out from the bottom of the curtain, that are the new mythology.” – Austin Chronicle