Filmmaker Scheduled to Appear, Indiana Premiere
Director Charlie Shackleton rescues victory from the jaws of defeat in this revelatory rumination on filmmaking and the overindulgences of the true crime genre.
Filmmaker Charlie Shackleton was hot on the trail of the next great American true crime documentary—a riveting account of a highway patrolman's quixotic effort to identify and capture the infamous Zodiac Killer. Shackleton devised a plan, began collecting interviews, and shot “evocative B-roll” footage of ghostly California freeways and parking lots where the killer may have once lurked. And then the project fell apart, leaving Shackleton with fragments of the unfinished film and time to ruminate on shortcuts and signifiers of the ubiquitous genre. Zodiac Killer Project emerges from the ash heap to probe and deconstruct the form with the incisive eye of a true crime connoisseur. Winner of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival NEXT Innovator Award. [91 min; documentary; English]
A prerecorded conversation unique to IU Cinema between director Charlie Shackleton and IU Professor Debra Tolchinsky will screen after the film.
Charlie Shackleton is a nonfiction filmmaker living and working in London. Previous projects include This Land, a radio documentary; short films Camera Test (King Cadbury), Lateral, Lasting Marks, Fish Story, Personal Truth, and Copycat; and two feature-length essay films, Beyond Clueless and Fear Itself. He’s best known for his 2016 protest film Paint Drying and its unlikely second act as the de facto town square of Letterboxd.
Debra Tolchinsky is a documentary director and producer, multimedia artist, curator, and professor in the IU Media School, with an affiliated appointment in the Maurer School of Law. Her four-part episodic documentary True Memories and Other Falsehoods examines false memory and false internalized beliefs within the criminal justice system, with particular attention to how the mind may become contaminated through the investigative process. On a more meta level, her work explores how documentary film itself can act as a contaminant.
This program is supported by the Jim and Roberta Sherman Inspiring Conversations Fund.
"The result is even better than his initial design: a sharp, hilarious, self-aware, and acutely insightful work of both celebration and critique." — Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
"This is not the first documentary to deal with thwarted creative ambitions. It may, however, be the one that most effectively and entertainingly cocks a snook at the very fates that conspired in the first place." — Wendy Ide, Screen Daily
"Shackleton’s perspective is still an intriguing, worthy provocation regarding our cultural bloodlust." — Robert Abele, The Los Angeles Times
Any film screened at IU Cinema may contain content that viewers find sensitive or upsetting. Visit our Audience Advisories page to learn more.
