AMERICAN ZOO

Director: Tim Travers Hawkins

Truth is way, way stranger than fiction in this twisty documentary about a lost zoo and an American family playing God with nature. 

Emmy-nominated documentarian Tim Travers Hawkins was hiking when he stumbled upon the ruins of a zoo in the middle of the woods. A set of lost home movies became the starting point of American Zoo, a documentary that blasts open the doors of the old zoo to uncover three generations of family secrets that will take you from the sheltered forests of rural U.S. to the height of German fascism, investigating the viciousness of humans who experimented with genetic modifications in animals, believing to be able to bend the living to their will. A feat of precision, Hawkins’s latest is best enjoyed without much prior knowledge of this twisty, almost unbelievable story. But trust us, you are in for one hell of a ride. (ANNA BOGUTSKAYA)