SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2026 • 7:30 pm • MIDTOWN CINEMA – buy tickets
THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2026 • 1:00 pm • MIDTOWN CINEMA – buy tickets

USA, UK, Ukraine, 2024/Documentary, 103 minutes/English, Russian w/subtitles/Directed by Joshua Zeman/Written by Daniel Lonsbury and Joshua Zeman

In the early days of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, was turned into a warzone. On one side of the battlefield was the invading Russian army, on the other side, the defending Ukrainians, and caught in between them was Feldman Ecopark, a veritable Noah’s Ark with more than 5000 animals in the line of fire.  Checkpoint Zoo is the incredible story of a band of zookeepers and volunteers who braved the shelling time and again to care for the animals until it became clear that the impossible had to be done:  evacuate the entire park, including scores of dangerous predators, and deliver them to safety.  Shining a light on the best of humanity when it is all too easy to focus on the worst, this is a film not to be missed!

Winner:  10 Audience or Best Documentary Awards including the Minneapolis St. Paul and Hamptons International Film Festivals as well as the Annapolis, Miami, Palm Springs, Mill Valley, and Salem Film Festivals.  Nominated: Best Documentary Feature, 2024 Tribeca Film Festival and 2025 Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards.

Checkpoint Zoo has been generously sponsored by Handler, Henning, and Rosenberg LLC

Joshua Zeman is a leading filmmaker in immersive documentary storytelling. As a producer, director, and/or writer, his stamp is on numerous investigative docu-series, among them The Killing Season and Netflix’s Murder Mountain. Previous to Checkpoint Zoo, his most recent project, The Loneliest Whale, was critically acclaimed as “a modern-day Moby Dick.” A pre-recorded Zoom interview with Josh will follow the screenings.