DEEP WEB To Open @ The Bloor July 4th Weekend

After a super successful festival run, one of the most talked about and anticipated films is opening theatrically in Toronto. Deep Web, from director Alex Winter (Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Freaked) chronicles one of the most important and riveting digital crime sagas of the century — the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the 30-year-old entrepreneur recently convicted of being ‘Dread Pirate Roberts,’ creator and operator of online black market Silk Road.

The film is narrated by Keanu Reeves, making this the first time Reeves and Winter have worked together since 1993’s Freaked, which followed their co-starring roles in the successful Bill and Ted films.

Deep Web opens in Toronto at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema on July 3.

“I’m honored to be working with Alex Winter on his timely and vital documentary, Deep Web said Reeves. “The Silk Road and trial of Ross Ulbricht involve many important and complex issues that impact the life of Mr. Ulbricht and us all.”

Deep Web seeks to unravel a tangled web of secrecy, accusations, and criminal activity, and explores how the outcome of Ulbricht’s trial will set a critical precedent for the future of technological freedom around the world. The film features exclusive interviews with the Ulbricht family, including Ross’ parents Lyn and Kirk Ulbricht. Additional interviewees include: Joshua Dratel, Ulbricht’s lawyer; Andy Greenberg, technology writer for Wired, author of This Machine Kills Secrets and the first reporter to interview “Dread Pirate Roberts”; Cody Wilson, a crypto-anarchist known for his development of the “3D printed gun;” Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; James Chaparro, the former Assistant Director for Intelligence at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); and Christopher Soghoian, a privacy and online security advocate who works for ACLU as their principal technologist.

“Think that the thing to really understand is that — getting it out from the specific into the general a bit, so we don’t give anybody in the government a heart attack — the people at the front end of creating reform in the digital space are the people at the front end of creating encryption and anonymity tools that work,” says Director Winter. “I think that they’re not only going to win, but the thing to remember is that it’s not the government versus these people. A lot of these tools are being created by people in the government, and not all of them are called whistleblowers. Sometimes whistleblowers are very much needed, but sometimes that kind of reform can happen within the government without the need for a whistleblower.”

Deep Web is written, directed and produced by Alex Winter with Marc Schiller and Glen Zipper also serving as producers. Winter and Schiller previously worked together on the documentary Downloaded, about the rise and fall of Napster. Zipper’s prior credits include the Academy Award® winning Undefeated and the Grammy Award® winning Foo Fighters: Back and Forth. Seth Gordon (Print the Legend, Mitt, Freakonomics and Undefeated) is the executive producer, Andy Greenberg is the consulting producer, and Dan Swietlik (Sicko and An Inconvenient Truth) is the editor.

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