February 8 Only
After the film: Join us for a Q&A with Director Joshua Zeman in conversation with documentary filmmaker John Hoffman.
Director: Joshua Zeman
Writers: Daniel Lonsbury, Joshua Zeman
Cast: Oleksandr Feldman Oleksii Husak,Vitalii Ilchenko
A gripping documentary set during the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Kharkiv's beloved Feldman Ecopark Zoo found itself caught in the crossfire between advancing Russian forces and Ukrainian defenders. Home to over 5,000 animals, the approaching front line left the zoo's creatures trapped in their cages with little food and water, facing starvation and increasing danger as the Russian army approached.
1hr 43mins
Joshua Zeman is one of the leading voices in documentary storytelling. His critically-acclaimed film Cropsey is considered one of the top true crime documentaries of the past decade. In 2017, Zeman executive produced and directed The Killing Season for A&E, an unscripted docu series also executive produced by Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney. Zeman also directed Murder Mountain, a 6-part docu-series for Netflix that’s been called “a must-watch” by The Daily Beast; The Sons of Sam, which was the #1 watched show on Netflix around the world during the week it was released; The Loneliest Whale, a cinematic quest to find the 52Hz Whale, whom scientists believe has spent its entire life in solitude. The film, which was executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Adrian Grenier, has been called “a modern-day Moby Dick" that “will keep you on the edge of your seat” by the LA Times.
John Hoffman is a six-time Emmy award-winning filmmaker, whose films include The Barber of Little Rock, which was nominated for a 2024 Academy Award; Fauci (2021) - a National Geographic portrait, and The Antidote (2020). Some of his other films include Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman (2017) and Out of Many, One (2018). Much of John's work as a filmmaker has focused on the key health issues of our time, including The Weight of the Nation (HBO), Addiction (HBO), The Alzheimer's Project (HBO), and First in Human (Discovery) – a 6-hour series set in the world’s largest research hospital, the NIH’s Building 10. In addition to making films, John was the Executive Vice President of Documentaries & Specials for Discovery from 2015 to 2018, and served nearly two decades as Vice President of Documentary Programming at HBO.