Folks have been able to see sections of this at (since?) EuroPython, and snippets have been posted by cult.repo on YouTube, but this time it’s the full reel!
I will update this thread with the film’s URL once it is ready. It will show a countdown timer until the actual release time on Thursday, August 28 (2025):
19:00 CET
10am US Pacific
Starting at that time there will be an online release party / live chat on the YouTube page. The film is about 85 minutes long.
I’ve seen the film, and all fans of Python should really enjoy it. Try to carve out time to attend the live release chat!
What to expect: CultRepo (formerly Honeypot) makes niche documentaries for tech fans. They’re not looking to win movie awards, but to create content their target audience will appreciate. No hardball, staged drama, or “gotcha” ploys. Think of your favorite cultish cable “news” channel interviewing your favorite cultish celebrity .
Guido said more in his parallel post to the Events category:
It’s a good mix. However, Python’s history now encompasses a cast of many thousands, and many notable people aren’t even mentioned. For example, Fredrik Lundh (the legendary effbot, now deceased) only shows up via his name flashing by in a brief screenshot of an email he sent to Guido in the very early days.
A great many don’t show up at all. I’d name more, but any list I presented would necessarily also miss many. Suffice it say that even half of the PythonLabs crew didn’t get any mention (although do show up in a group photo).
I do show up, but not “live”. For various reasons (mostly related to declining health), I didn’t actively participate. I gave the director (Ida Bechtle) a pile of source material at the start, and that was the last of my involvement. She spliced in some recycled video of an interview I did with the PyPy folks at a PyCon some years ago, but I’m there mostly so people could recite my so-called “Zen of Python”, which an actual historian (Joseph Dragovich) assured me is “the most famous values statement for any programming language community”.
Which I think is true. But even if you hate that, it occupies a brief part of the film, and you’ll find plenty else to like.
If you’re in Athens on Thursday at 20:30 EEST, PyCon Greece is hosting the official premiere at an open air cinema! It’s open to everyone, although priority is for PyCon Greece ticket holders. Register here:
I wasn’t able to tune in until a few minutes ago, around 12:45 Central, so it picked up in the middle. I trust it will be available later, not one-and-done, correct?
Although the link embedded in Guido’s post brings up (at least for me) an in-browser viewer that’s far inferior to viewing it directly on YouTube. Among other things, the latter gives the option to show the live chat during the premiere. Which was also fun! So I advise going to the filmmaker’s YouTube home page and clicking on the “Python: The Documentary” link from there:
FYI, you can always click on the YouTube logo on the in-browser viewer to open the video in a new tab/window. It will even remember where you left off. (Bottom row, right side, next to the ‘full screen’ button)
I think I underestimated the appeal of this film even for “outsiders”. I made a post about it, in advance, on my Facebook wall, and today that attracted a comment from a woman I’ve never met. She has nothing to do with computers in any way, and we’re connected only by that we became FarmVille “neighbors” over a dozen years ago. We just had fun helping each other progress in the game, and have been on friendly terms all along, persisting after that game ended (indeed, the vast bulk of my Facebook “friends” are still all former FarmVille neighbors -which is why I got a Facebook account to begin with, to help a real-life pal out in her quest to make faster progress in the game).
So this took me by surprise:
I think the film did a superb job of getting across how much of the Python world is composed of really nice people, so much so that a viewer didn’t need to have any advance knowledge of them to be charmed by them.
I think I remember Chris telling your days then were spent alternating between play FarmVille and crushing the stock market.
I have in incredibly vivid memory of my first conversation with you. I was driving down I-95, around Potomac Mills, and I was 80% nervous and 40% anxious. You had achieved such a mythic status by then. As it turned out, you were and are a lovely person. What Drew said about Guido at Dropbox – just somebody who badged in and you’d never know they were a hero to so many – could be said verbatim for you.
And then a gushing comment about the film from a former FarmVille neighbor on Facebook. The discussion continued, which I’ll reproduce here, because it says so much about the film’s impact on someone who knew nothing about Python:
@nas spontaneously started fleshing this out in a comment on my Facebook post, and I’d hate to see that lost (a Facebook comment is about the most invisible thing on the planet). While we’re all feeling nostalgic, can we do something to capture more of those early memories of Python pioneers? I only mentioned effbot, and Neil did too, but also mentions more who are on my own internal list of people whose early contributions were crucial, from Ka-Ping Yee to Christian Tismer and Fred Drake.
I’d also include people outside of core development. For example, Laura Creighton wasn’t a core dev, but founded AB Strakt and the Python Business Forum. She played key roles too.
I hope posting this here will shame @nas into posting his comment in a new topic in this category, and then we can work out ways to collaborate on filling in more of the story, before it’s lost to time forever.
While I normally post only to “friends” on Facebook, for some reason I felt compelled to share this post as “public”. Now I know why . You should be able to see it.
I am halfway through and learning so much! Just starting my coding journey, career change you can say. What an interesting documentary so far. I actually stopped to try to do some basic python to try it out haha. Tried years ago but never caught on. WIth AI up and coming it got me excited to try again. Everyone go watch it!
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