Director’s Statement

The internet is one of the primary forces shaping our world, exerting enormous power over our social lives, politics, and economies.  And yet, we struggle to find the language to confront and examine this influence; technology can be invisible and incomprehensible, difficult to see and difficult to understand. And more importantly, power structures are also invisible and intangible, exerting coercion from a place of concealment or obfuscation. 

The End of the Internet explores this complex dynamic through the internet decentralization movement - a group of radicals scattered around the world. This group believes that the problem at the heart of the internet lies in infrastructure - which has allowed power over the digital world to be centralized in the hands of a small group of monolithic corporations and governments. The solution: to rewire the internet in the service of freedom and equity. 

I wanted to embrace the complexity of this story through cinematic form - presenting the viewers with a structure that mirrors the decentralized nature of this world. The film gives the audience a series of glimpses into the worlds where the decentralization struggle is unfolding - an anarchist squat in Berlin, an indigenous village in Brazil, a parking garage in Miami, a church in northern Spain, a dystopic landscape in Taiwan. It also works its way backward through the history of the internet - presenting key moments in the history of this technology, when choices were made and political trajectories were altered. Through these disparate encounters, I want to encourage the viewer to piece together their own perspective of the story. What emerges is a complex portrait of a movement at odds with itself. One that struggles with the paradox at the heart of technology: is it a tool or a weapon? 

My hope is that this adventurous approach to form and structure will be a rewarding (and dare I say, fun?) one for the audience. This is a film that asks for engagement and reflection, trusting its audience to find meaning in the spaces between its moments.