In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Feldman Ecopark, a beloved animal refuge on the outskirts of Kharkiv, found itself caught in the crossfire. Home to over 5,000 animals, the zoo had long served as a sanctuary, offering animal therapy programs for children with special needs and adults in recovery. But as relentless shelling devastated the region, the animals were left trapped in their enclosures with dwindling food and water, while a handful of zookeepers struggled to care for them.
Five weeks into the war, the park’s founder, Oleksandr Feldman, issued a desperate plea on social media, capturing global attention. Volunteers and zoos across Ukraine and Europe rushed to help, sparking a daring rescue mission. Risking their lives, a team of zookeepers and volunteers infiltrated the Ecopark to evacuate the surviving animals—some tragically losing their own lives in the process. Through firsthand footage and on-the-ground reporting, filmmaker Joshua Zeman reconstructs this extraordinary rescue, offering a powerful testament to the resilience of both human and animal lives in the face of war.
Bridie O’Connell, Assistant Director of Salem Film Fest, had the opportunity to chat with Zeman ahead of CHECKPOINT ZOO’s New England premiere to learn more about the film.
BO: What initially drew you to this story, and at what point in the crisis did you decide this needed to be documented as a film?
JZ: A few months after Russia invaded Ukraine, I read an article in the New York Times about a chimpanzee named Chichi who had escaped from the Kharkiv Zoo, which is in Ukraine's second-largest city and only 30m from the Russian border. The escaped chimp was walking through Freedom Square which is a park in the center of this war-torn city. It was that juxtaposition of this chimp searching for its freedom, walking through Freedom Square while the residents of Kharkiv were searching for their freedom, but more so watching this video, you can see the faces of all these onlookers, who were both stunned and delighted by what they were witnessing… and that's the power that animals have on us -- how animals can heal us, how they can break through the horrors of war and make us realize there is still innocence in this world
The next day, I did some research and discovered that Chichi had been evacuated from another zoo just outside of Kharkiv -- an animal sanctuary called Feldman Ecopark, that had been completely destroyed. And led me to the story of all these zookeepers and volunteers who had filmed themselves evacuating all these animals. At that point it was a story that I knew needed to be told.
BO: What were some of the biggest obstacles you faced in making CHECKPOINT ZOO, regarding access, safety, or storytelling while working in an active war zone?
JZ: Even just getting to Kharkiv took several days. You couldn't just fly into Kharkiv, or anywhere in Ukraine, so first I had to travel to Warsaw, Poland and then someone had to drive across the border and pick us up -- interestingly only Ukrainian women were allowed to drive across the border because the men were being conscripted. And we were in an active War Zone which meant we had to have medical training, we had to wear army helmets and kevlar vests that could stop a sniper bullet. It was intense. Even when we were filming interviews there were missile strikes all around us.
BO: Over the years, we've found that our Salem Film Fest audience loves animals. Through your work on this film, what moments or insights changed how you think about the bond between animals and humans?
JZ: Something that stuck out to me was just how many of the people who had to evacuate were carrying pets with them. It reminded me of a similar situation during Hurricane Katrina where so many people refused to leave their flooding homes unless they could bring their pets. And as much as this is a story of people saving animals, it's also really a story about how much animals save us.
There's one zookeeper in the film in particular who spoke about having a very difficult life and struggled with everything from addiction to homelessness to depression, and how he finally found a purpose in caring for animals at Feldman Ecopark. Its founder, this incredibly wealthy businessman, didn't hesitate at all to sell off incredibly valuable collections to fund the evacuation and even offer up the use of his home to shelter the animals while they looked for permanent homes. And again it's this idea that animals have the ability to bring out the best in us, which is what I wanted to capture with this film.
BO: The events documented in your film unfolded in real time and were captured by those experiencing it firsthand. How did you approach sourcing and incorporating this footage, and what do you think it adds to the film?
JZ: What's interesting is how big of a role that footage actually played in the story itself. The staff found places to relocate the animals to because of footage they posted to their social media explaining their crisis. That footage attracted the four young volunteers who helped with the evacuation and those volunteers filmed even more footage that made the story go viral across the world.
So much of the story unfolded because of the footage being shared by the staff, that incorporating it into the film was very natural. In terms of what it adds to the film, so much. It really grounds the film in the perspective of the everyday people who undertake this impossible mission. It's one thing to be told about a kid driving a pack of kangaroos out of a warzone, but to see that kid, smiling, filming himself on his phone with all these animals in the back of his van, it reminds you that these are real people, that this is really happening.
BO: What do you hope audiences take away from CHECKPOINT ZOO — both in terms of the human story and the larger impact of war on animals and conservation efforts?
JZ: For how much we love animals, we don't often think about them in such situations. We look at tragedies like war and natural disasters and we think about politics, borders, economics, and I hope that seeing it through the eyes of animals, who don't understand or care about any of that, makes us examine our own species. Very frequently, stories about war are stories about the dark, horrible sides of humanity, because war brings out the worst in us. But as I mentioned, animals bring out the best in us, and I hope that by putting the two side-by-side, audiences will see how extraordinary we can be when we're at our best.
CHECKPOINT ZOO screens in-person during Salem Film Fest at Cinema Salem on Friday, March 28 at 4:10pm.
