Almost a year ago, the shares of GameStop went up to around $500, after starting 2021 at $17, thanks to amateur day traders. A new documentary will hit theaters next week to explain how this equities craze came about.

GameStop: Rise of the Players examines why the video game retailer’s shares soared and who the players were involved in one of Wall Street’s biggest stories of the year. The film hails from director Jonah Tullis, who directed Console Wars, a documentary about the video game battle between Sega and Nintendo in the 90s.

At the end of 2020, traders in subreddit r/WallStreetBets began to take notice of GameStop’s low stock prices, which were in the single digits for most of the year, and they saw an increasing number of bets saying the stock was going to drop further, known as short sale. These traders started buying more and more of the retailer’s shares, which led investment firms that were betting against the stock to buy more shares in order to avoid losing a huge amount of money, what is called a “short squeeze”. ”

The result was GameStop’s shares hit record highs, peaking at $483. What followed was several congressional hearings about what happened, and questioning investment app companies such as Robinhood, which halted trading in GameStop shares when the price kept going up.

GameStop: Rise to the Players hits theaters on January 28.