The Story Behind the Wrenching Finale of The Anarchists

The Anarchists begins with a fire. Children rip pages from books and throw them into the fire. A man with a textbook in his hand yells "Fuck you!" as his son watches. A child throws papers into the fire. There is a wild scene. These people are not known.

A hard-partying software designer who moved his family from the middle-America suburbs to Mexico to help run a new conference called Anarchapulco is the ring leader. A strain of libertarian thinking known as anarcho-capitalism was intended to be the focus of the community. There is a bonfire straight out of a novel. Community-building exercises are typical. This debaucherous, squabbling group of tax-hating libertines had a peaceful moment during which it happened. The book-burning was just a start to a lot of chaos.

Todd thought he was working on an exploration of an eccentric countercultural group that could be used as a digital short. He kept his cameras rolling for six years as he witnessed the group rapidly grow and break. He followed a colorful cast of characters, including the Freemans, conspiracy theorists, and Anarchapulco founder Jeff Berwick, as they tried to live out their ideological convictions.

Since they dreamed of a stateless existence, the group enthusiastically boosted the use of cryptocurrencies, and found themselves flush with money after the price of Bitcoins increased. The title of the docu-series is "Anarcho-capitalism has nothing to do with traditional anarchism." The Hedonistic Libertarians would have been more correct. Along the way, fortunes were lost and many of the principle characters died.

The director of the film talked to WIRED about how to roll with unexpected real-life plot twists.

The conversation has been edited to make it clearer and longer.

The Anarchists' origin story needs to be told. What made you want to go to Anarachapulco?

As a young punk rock musician, I came across the idea of anarchism. Some of the bands that were associated with that world had an interest in classical anarchism, which was born out of the 19th century labor rights movement. When I became a voter, I began to explore some of the ideas of anarchy and anarchism.