BITCOIN — BAKOUNINE & SATOSHI
A documentary film by the Languin brothers
Duration: 90 to 100 minutes
Language: French / English / Original subtitles
Format: Hybrid documentary (investigation + portraits + visual manifesto)
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They No Longer Believe in the State
They've abandoned faith in banks. They've turned away from traditional institutions. Instead, they believe in something far more radical: code itself.
The hodlers — the true believers — don't trade their Bitcoin for profit. They hold. They wait. They pray before their cold wallets like pilgrims before sacred icons, their devotion absolute and unwavering.
For these digital monks, Bitcoin isn't merely an asset class or investment vehicle. It represents something far more profound: an exile from the corrupted financial system, a slow-burning insurrection against monetary servitude.
Yet silently, methodically, the old powers regroup. BlackRock, Vanguard, and central banks worldwide are preparing the domestication of this revolutionary fire, scheming to transform rebellion into just another tradable commodity.
"Bitcoin — Bakounine & Satoshi" chronicles this fundamental fracture: the epic struggle between Bitcoin's original libertarian ideal and its programmed absorption by financial capitalism.
A Film About Digital Faith
Economic Disobedience
An investigation into those who've chosen radical financial sovereignty over participation in traditional monetary systems
Digital Messianism
Bitcoin as political and spiritual phenomenon — a new faith born from absolute distrust of monetary power
Systemic Recuperation
How financial powers have sought to neutralize and domesticate this revolutionary weapon
This documentary is an inquiry into digital faith, economic disobedience, and systemic recuperation. We examine Bitcoin not as an "investment opportunity," but as a profound political and spiritual phenomenon — a messianism emerging from complete defiance of monetary authority.
Then we flip the coin: revealing how financial powers have strategically worked to neutralize this weapon, transforming revolution into regulation, ideology into index funds.
"The camera seeks the believers, not the traders. People who've chosen slowness and conviction over speculation. People who've read Bakounine and recognized in Satoshi an unknown brother."
Act I — Genesis & Faith
DON'T TRUST. VERIFY.
The film opens in darkness. A refrigerator door opens, casting cold blue light across a face. A USB key glints. Heavy breathing. A man whispers a seed phrase — twenty-four words that contain a fortune, an identity, a future. Cut rapidly: faces everywhere, across continents, hodlers anonymous and united in their conviction.
2008: The Crisis
Global financial system collapses. Banks fail. Trust evaporates completely.
The Whitepaper
Satoshi Nakamoto publishes nine pages that will change everything. Code becomes gospel.
The First Believers
Anonymous individuals download, mine, and recognize each other across the network.
Digital Theology
Bitcoin becomes a theology of disorder. A religion without priests.
We meet the witnesses to this digital genesis through intimate, searching portraits:
The Former Banker
Now a crypto evangelist living in rural isolation, he speaks of his conversion with the fervor of someone who's seen the machine from inside and chosen exodus.
The Italian Mother
Mining Bitcoin on solar panels in Tuscany, she explains how financial sovereignty means feeding her children outside the debt system.
The Libertarian Developer
Holding his coins since 2011, unmoved by volatility, he quotes Satoshi like scripture and Bakounine like prophecy.

The hodlers become monks of the 21st century, refusing the servitude of debt. They cite Satoshi as others cite Bakounine: "Freedom exists only when it depends on no one."
Act II — Machines & Patents
BEFORE THE REVOLT, THE PLAN
The investigation takes an unexpected turn into dusty archives. We discover that in 1987 — twenty years before Satoshi's whitepaper — researchers connected to Citibank filed a patent describing a "decentralized electronic currency system." The idea existed. But it remained under banking control, a caged concept waiting to escape.
01
Documentary Archaeology
Static shots of yellowed folders. Voice-over reads technical descriptions. Minimalist graphics appear like old CRT terminal displays, green phosphor on black.
02
Legal Deconstruction
Intellectual property lawyers dissect the differences: Satoshi didn't invent electronic money — he removed the banker from the equation.
03
The Missing Piece
Even the "double spending prevention" method had been envisioned, but never implemented without a trusted third party. Satoshi simply removed the throne.
The Witnesses Speak
  • David Chaum — Pioneer of eCash, cryptography historian
  • Former R&D researcher — New York banking sector, identity protected
  • Anonymous hackers — Voices masked, faces blurred, speaking truth to power
The Central Question
Is Bitcoin an invention of the people... or a laboratory technology that escaped its creators? Was it liberation or leak? Revolution or accident?
Act III — The Enemy Within
THE WEAPON IS BEAUTIFUL, BUT IT CHANGES HANDS
Since 2021, the institutions have entered the dance. BlackRock, Fidelity, JPMorgan — all filing Bitcoin ETFs with regulatory approval. The sacred fire becomes a derivative product. Revolution transforms into a ticker symbol. The cage is gilded, but it's still a cage.
Institutional Accumulation
On-chain tracking reveals systematic asset absorption during market dips
ETF Integration
Animated maps and graphs show BTC flowing into traditional financial instruments
Community Fracture
The believers split between purity and pragmatism, ideology and adoption
We interview ETF analysts and dissident economists, watching them navigate the contradiction: Can a tool designed to escape the system survive inside it? Can revolution be bought and sold without becoming just another product?
The Great Division
The Purists
They refuse all KYC, all contact with the system. For them, Bitcoin's power lies in its separation from state control. To integrate is to surrender. They mine in secret, transact peer-to-peer, and guard their keys like medieval knights protecting holy relics.
The Integrated
They believe mainstream adoption is victory. If everyone owns Bitcoin, even through ETFs, doesn't that validate the vision? Perhaps the system absorbing Bitcoin is actually Bitcoin transforming the system from within.
The dramatic tension crystallizes: Bitcoin is no longer an escape route. It has become a golden cage — comfortable, regulated, safe. But what price has been paid for that safety?

Final scene of Act III: In a dense forest, a man digs into dark earth and buries a metal box containing a hardware wallet. Voice over, quiet but resolute: "Satoshi disappeared. He wasn't a man. He was an idea. And ideas don't need authorization."
Aesthetics & Realization
Visual Language
Handheld camera work, natural lighting, film grain or 16mm simulation. Hard contrasts, color grading near neon and urban night. Inspirations drawn from Adam Curtis, Werner Herzog, and Citizenfour.
Sound Design
Industrial ambiences layered with synthetic drones. Brief, nervous interventions that mirror heartbeats and anxiety. Original score: cold pulsations and strategic silences, like the breathing of machines waiting to wake.
Voice-Over Narration
Tone is pamphletary, dry, lucid, almost furious — channeling Spider Jerusalem's gonzo journalism. Writing style is minimalist and syncopated, delivered in sharp, cutting phrases that demand attention.
Graphic Treatment
Retro interface aesthetics (green CRT terminal). Data-minimalist animations. No "crypto bro" flash: no gaudy 3D, no corporate logos. Just code, text, and reality stripped to its essence.
"Every frame must feel like documentary evidence, not spectacle. The truth is dramatic enough without embellishment. We film reality with the intensity usually reserved for fiction."
Political Intentions
This Film Is Not For or Against Bitcoin
Against Monetary Servitude
We oppose the invisible chains of debt-based currency systems that bind citizens to institutions they cannot control, cannot audit, cannot escape.
For Memory and Disobedience
We stand with those who remember that power concentrated is power corrupted, and that true freedom requires the courage to say no.
The Core Argument
Even digital revolutions eventually get listed on stock exchanges. Every uprising, no matter how pure its origins, faces the gravitational pull of capital seeking to transform resistance into revenue, ideology into commodity.
The sacred becomes securitized. The revolutionary becomes regulated. The fire that promised to burn down the old world gets captured, contained, and sold back to us as a controlled flame in a decorative lamp.
But there always remains someone who refuses to sell.
Someone who remembers the original vision. Someone who holds their keys and keeps their faith. Someone who believes that the code contains a promise that can never be fully domesticated, no matter how many institutions try.

This is their story. Not the story of those who got rich. But the story of those who stayed true.
Production Framework
100
Minutes
Total duration
250K
Euro Budget
Estimated production cost
7
Core Team
Lean production crew
Technical Specifications
  • Format: DCP / 16:9 / Color
  • Locations: Europe, United States, Asia (subject to hodler availability and access)
  • Production approach: Lightweight, mobile, embedded journalism style
  • Post-production: 6-8 months including translation and festival preparation
Lean Production Team
  1. Director/Camera: 2
  1. Director of Photography: 1
  1. Sound Engineer: 1
  1. Editor: 1
  1. Data Visualist/VFX: 1
  1. Composer: 1
  1. Producer: 1
The production philosophy mirrors Bitcoin's own ethos: decentralized, efficient, autonomous. A small team moving quickly, making decisions collectively, avoiding bureaucratic overhead. We shoot what matters, when it matters, with whoever will speak truth.
Audience & Distribution Strategy
Primary Target: Festival Circuit
IDFA
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
Visions du Réel
Nyon, Switzerland
Sundance
Documentary Competition
Berlinale Panorama
Berlin International Film Festival
Broadcast & Streaming Distribution
Traditional Channels
  • ARTE — Primary European public broadcaster target
  • FranceTV Slash — Digital/youth-oriented platform
  • Netflix Docs — Global streaming potential
  • VOD platforms — Vimeo On Demand for independent distribution
Secondary Audiences
  • Cryptocurrency communities and Bitcoin advocates
  • Social science researchers studying digital economies
  • Political cinephiles and documentary enthusiasts
  • Design schools and critical economics programs
The distribution strategy embraces both establishment channels and grassroots networks — mirroring Bitcoin itself. We'll pursue traditional festival prestige and broadcast deals while simultaneously making the film accessible to the communities it documents. Some may watch on Netflix. Others will share encrypted torrent links. Both are valid.
Directors' Statement
"Bitcoin is not just code.
It's anger transformed into algorithm.
It's the idea that you can subtract yourself from the system without firing a single bullet.
It's Bakounine meeting Turing across a century of failed revolutions.
And it may be the last utopia of the digital age before everything gets bought out."
We make this film at a crucial moment: when Bitcoin stands at the crossroads between revolutionary tool and financial product, between liberation technology and investment vehicle. The outcome is not yet determined.
History shows us that every technology of freedom eventually faces recuperation. The printing press was controlled by the church. The internet was commercialized. Open-source code gets bought by corporations. Bitcoin will not escape this pattern completely.
But resistance persists. In every system of control, there are those who refuse. Those who remember the original vision and work to preserve it against all odds. Those who understand that some things are more important than profit.
This documentary is for them. The believers. The hodlers. The ones who won't sell.

Contact: For production inquiries, festival submissions, or partnership opportunities, reach out to the Languin brothers through our production company.