On May 25, 2026, Princess Cinema hosted an interactive screening of The End of the Internet, a documentary exploring the global fight over digital sovereignty and information control.
Directed by Kitchener-Waterloo native Dylan Reibling, the investigative feature traces internet decentralization from the Cold War to corporate control. Reibling attended the screening to engage with the audience.
The film navigates diverse geopolitical landscapes—an anarchist squat in Berlin, a technologically progressive Taiwan, a church in Northern Spain, a parking garage in Miami, and an Indigenous village in the Brazilian rainforest. Each site highlights local resistance against centralized corporate and state forces dictating the global flow of information.
Reibling’s inspiration originated from his work on the Vice TV series Cyberwar, which focused on hacking and geopolitics.
“That got me very interested in sort of the cutting edge of technology and politics and how technology shapes our social, economic, and political worlds,” Reibling said, adding that a chance encounter with a crypto-anarchist at a conference in the Czech Republic sparked the multi-year project.
For Reibling, the core challenge of the project lay in balancing heavy structural concepts with artistic storytelling.
“I’m very interested in the technology and the politics and those undercurrents,” Reibling said. “But I’m also a filmmaker who wants to connect with audiences, so it’s important for me to find cinematic ways to tell a story that sort of compels people further into the story, rather than just dumping facts on them.”
This thematic tension dictated the film’s visual palette. Rather than applying a traditional look, formal, locked-off tripod shots mirrored rigid technical infrastructure tours, while dynamic, handheld movement submerged audiences in the unpredictable environments of outlier tech activists.
The film came to the independent theatre through Game Theory Films, but local organizers quickly recognized a deeper hometown connection.
“We learned that director Dylan Reibling grew up in Waterloo Region and frequently attended the Princess Cinemas,” Sophia Irwin, programming coordinator and assistant manager at the Princess Cinemas, said.
Irwin noted that the themes felt uniquely tailored to a local audience, given the region’s identity as a technological epicentre. The venue frequently partners with institutions like the Perimeter Institute to bridge the gap between academic discourse and the public.
“Waterloo is a city of innovation that fosters big ideas,” Irwin said. “While academic spaces are the primary location for learning, film can be an accessible medium for our community to join similar conversations.”
Among the movements highlighted, Reibling noted how his time with Ramon Roca, creator of Spain’s guifi.net decentralized mesh network, upended his understanding of digital infrastructure. In the film, Roca compares corporate internet control to a monopoly on coffee, noting that while Starbucks is a fine place to get a drink, consumers should never be told it is the only place coffee can exist.
“For [Roca], real innovation is working cooperatively with your friends and neighbours,” Reibling said. “The internet is more social than anything else.”
The documentary also tackles alternative decentralized platforms like Urbit, a case study wrapped in political subcultures. Drawing a parallel to the unintended social polarization following Facebook’s creation, Reibling expressed skepticism about whether creators can control the societal outcomes of their code.
“I’m not sure that a specific technology can be tailored to create a specific political outcome,” Reibling said.
Ultimately, he hopes the film serves as an educational wake-up call about the outsized influence of tech monopolies on communication, surveillance, and censorship. To enhance the interactive screening, attendees accessed an offline, local server installed in the cinema lobby to download exclusive research materials and deleted scenes independently of the traditional web.
He hopes the physical experience leaves local audiences with meaningful discussion points long after leaving the theatre.
“The idea of decentralization is like…you have to pick a point along that spectrum,” Reibling said. “I hope this film tries to inspire people to be critical of the technology and how it shapes their world.”
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