TPB-AFK, the upcoming documentary about The Pirate Bay and its founders, has a release date. The film is premiering with a prominent spot at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival on February 8. At the same time TPB-AFK will also be released for free on the Internet., making it the first film ever to premiere both online and at an A-list festival.

Hollywood often hears that they force people into pirating films by failing to make their content widely available.

It often takes months before a blockbuster movie appears online after it premieres in theaters, while the public demands instant access.

So, when a documentary is made about the founders of The Pirate Bay, things have to be done differently. And this is exactly what’s going to happen with the upcoming release of TPB-AFK.

Today it was officially announced that the documentary will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) on February 8th. This offline premiere coincides with the free online release, making it the first ever to have such a double release.

“I’m so thrilled to open the ‘Panorama Dokumente’ section of the Berlinale with the first film ever to be released for free online from an A-festival,” TPB-AFK director Simon Klose tells TorrentFreak in a comment.

“The Pirate Bay changed the film industry from the outside, I’m trying to change it from within,” he adds, hinting that it might be wise for others to follow this trend.

After seeing the TPB-AFK trailer many users and followers of the notorious BitTorrent site are excited to see the documentary. However, the film doesn’t have the classic Hollywood ending most are used to.

TorrentFreak talked to several people who’ve seen a private screener and the overall impression we got is that it’s not the most uplifting story. That doesn’t come as a surprise of course, as most of the material covers how the three founders fought their legal battles in Sweden, and lost.

Peter Sunde, one of the three founders followed in the documentary, has mixed feelings about the end result.

“It tells an important story,” Sunde tells TorrentFreak.

“I don’t want to tell too much about it because people should see it and make up their own minds. After seeing the full movie for the first time I was thinking about it for about two weeks without having an opinion or words to describe it.”

TPB-AFK highlights a lot of the negative events the three founders went through, ending with the final guilty verdict early last year. Needless to say these events had quite an impact on their lives.

“It’s still a fucked up story and the film makes me think about the past years of my life quite a lot,” Sunde says.

The Pirate Bay founder adds that he might have chosen other material to include and that many of the good parts are left out.

“It’s Simon’s decision what to include and it’s his view of our story. I like that he’s independent from us and that he’s promised to release lots of extra material for some of the things that I might have wanted to have included,” Sunde says.

Sunde concludes, however, that the director did a great job and that TPB-AFK is a must watch.