Participant Media and FilmBuff Nab ‘The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz’
Sundance 2014 has long passed, but Sundance Acquisitions 2014 are still going strong. Participant Media and FilmBuff have acquired Brian Knappenberger’s documentary “The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.”
The film, which played in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance and will screen at SXSW 2014, follows internet activist and programmer Swartz from his involvement in RSS and Reddit to his increased activism and controversial downloading of nearly four million academic articles form the online service JSTOR, which led to Swartz’s arrest, trial, and eventual suicide.
The film was directed, written, and produced by Knappeberger (“We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists”) and executive produced by Charles Annenberg Weingarten, Zach Braff and Mason Fink.
“From the moment I started filming, I wanted to find a way to both bring Aaron’s story to the widest possible audience and to use the film to advance the principles he cared about,” Knappenberger said.
The film is scheduled for theatrical and VOD release June 2014, followed by a broadcast television premiere on Participant’s network Pivot at the end of the year.
