10 July 2024

The Anarchists

From HBO and Blumhouse Productions, The Anarchists follows an eclectic cast of dreamers, fugitives, and crypto-enthusiasts whose annual gathering in Acapulco, Mexico, becomes a massive anarchist community. But what begins as a hopeful experiment to live out a radical new way of life proves to be more challenging and dangerous than anyone could have expected.

Unfolding over six years, the six-part documentary series chronicles a strange and deadly series of events that began with an impulsive one-off gathering in 2015 to promote anarchy in its purest form – an ideal espousing the absence of government with absolute individual self-rule.

The event, called “Anarchapulco”, draws an international array of libertarians, fugitives, and families seeking to unschool their children to protect them from the bureaucracies of modern life, as well as crypto-currency evangelists and others attracted to the idea of creating a stateless community, free from governments and central banking systems. But as the event grows, drawing rule-avoidant freedom activists to one of the most dangerous cities in the world, utopian ideology collides with the unpredictability of human nature.

With intimate access to the main players, The Anarchists features candid, first-hand accounts from the reluctant figurehead of the movement, Canadian entrepreneur-turned-provocateur Jeff Berwick; anarchy activists Lisa and Nathan Freeman, who left the US with their children to find a freer life in Mexico; and John Galton and Lily Forester, American fugitives on the run from drug charges, among others.

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