Once the film was finished, Merhige spent the next two years trying to find a distributor willing to market it. Following its debut at the Montreal World Film Festival, it was screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where it was seen by film critics Tom Luddy and Peter Scarlet. They brought it to the attention of fellow critic Susan Sontag, whose enthusiastic praise and private screenings of the film in her own home were instrumental to its eventual release. Though largely ignored by mainstream critics, it attained cult film status and influenced several avant-garde filmmakers, experimental artists, and musicians. The film's scarcity on home video prompted its fans to spread their own bootleg copies, a phenomenon described as a "copy-cult" by film studies scholar Ernest Mathijs. "Begotten" was reportedly banned in Singapore due to its violent content. As the first part of a planned series, "Begotten" was followed in 2006 by "Din of Celestial Birds", a short sequel with the theory of evolution as its dominant theme.