After its premiere at Sundance,Participant Media and FilmBuff acquired distribution rights of the film. The film was released to theatres andVOD on June 27, 2014, in United States.[6] It was followed by a broadcast television premiere on Participant's network Pivot in late 2014.[7][8][9][10]
The film's UK premiere took place atSheffield Doc/Fest in June 2014 and won the Sheffield Youth Jury Award that year.[13] In August 2014, the film was screened at theBarbican Centre in London as part ofWikimania 2014. TheBBC also aired the film in January 2015 as part of itsStoryville documentary brand. It was also released on the Internet with aCreative CommonsBY-NC-SA 4.0 license.[14]
The film depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer, and Internet activistAaron Swartz. Footage of Swartz as a child is featured at the start and end of the film. The film is narrated by figures from Swartz's life, including his parents, brothers, girlfriends, and co-workers....
The film received positive response from critics.[15] Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes gives the film a 93% rating based on reviews from 57 critics, with an average score of 7.3/10.[16]
Geoffrey Berkshire in his review forVariety described it as "A spellbinding portrait of the Internet whiz kid's life and political convictions, which were cut short by his suicide in early 2013."[17] John DeFore ofThe Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review and said that it was an "Excellent newbie-friendly account of a story that rocked the Web's cognoscenti."[18] Katherine Kilkenny fromIndiewire said that "The Internet's Own Boy aspires to provokeCapitol Hill by educating its viewers to inspire questions. Questions for those revered leaders inSilicon Valley – and for a government whose restrictions of the internet have been applied with a sledgehammer, as one source of the film says, instead of a scalpel."[19] In her review forThe Daily Telegraph, Amber Wilkinson gave the film three stars out of five and said that "Knappenberger's film is a heavy watch, mostly using talking heads and footage of Swartz before his death to tell a story which comes to question the state of civil liberties in the US."[20]
