I was an assistant Avid editor on ‘American Zoo', directed by Tim Travers Hawkins.

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AMERICAN ZOO is a stranger-than-fiction documentary thriller built from found footage and buried family secrets. Lost films, found in the rubble of America’s once largest private zoo, unlock a remarkable saga of two families – the Lindemanns, chasing dreams of amassing the greatest collection of rare animals in America and the Hecks, a German zoological dynasty with an unsavory past – entwined in a story of myth, power, and obsession.

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At first it plays like a surreal Jurassic Park in the Catskills: To the eager tourists, the Catskill Game Farm was pure family fun – elephants, hamburgers, summer nostalgia. But behind the fences lurked something stranger: attempts to resurrect primordial superbeasts from extinction, the byproduct of Nazi experiments to bend nature to fascist dreams, hidden in plain sight.

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Tribeca Festival 2026 Winner - Special Jury Mention for Best Editing in a Documentary Feature: Christopher A. Peterson and Peter Norrey for American Zoo (United Kingdom) – World Premiere

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The Jury Statement reads: “A searing account of an idyllic, joyful community space with a dark secret, the craft of editing weaves together a complex, dramatic, historical narrative from found, archival, shot footage and interviews. The result is a film both gripping and heartbreaking which stays with the viewer long after.”