Zodiac Killer Project
Sunday, April 6, 1:00 p.m., @ 2220 Arts + Archives
West Coast Premiere with director Charlie Shackleton in person
Sunday, April 6, 3:45 p.m., @ Vidiots MUBI Micro Cinema
Director: Charlie Shackleton
United Kingdom, 2025, 92 Min, DCP
The true crime genre’s ubiquity is driven by people’s endless fascination, disgust, and—bizarrely—search for comfort in genre conventions that still have the ability to generate complex emotions despite their predictability and familiarity. Having tried and failed to make a documentary about the infamous Zodiac Killer, filmmaker Charlie Shackleton walks the viewer through what his film would have been like and why, using Bay Area landscapes, reenactments, film and TV clips, and voice-over. In this wholly original, self-aware cinematic work, a filmmaker chews over what might have been and playfully probes the inner workings of a genre at saturation point.
Filmmaker and multimedia artist Charlie Shackleton wanted to make a movie about the Zodiac Killer, but first he lost the rights, and then the funding. In this deeply funny and incisive essay film, Shackleton unpacks the ubiquitous true-crime genre for all its pleasures, tropes, and sins against cinema, begging us to consider the lengths that storytellers (and viewers) go to make the truth—and reality itself—more palatable. Set against 16mm shots of empty Northern California locations amid excerpts of some of the most popular crime series of recent years, Shackleton’s self-aware narration evokes the films of Thom Andersen and Patrick Keiller in his abiding humor and ability to both celebrate and critique our glut of serialized trash.
Prior Screenings: 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Producers: Catherine Bray, Anthony Ing, Charlie Shackleton