“Utterly bizarre in the best possible way, this lovingly handmade animated feature isn’t like anything you’ve seen before.” - Leslie Felperin, The Guardian
“Rendered in such labor-of-love artwork, the grandiose and grotesque characters are drawn and voiced with such individuality and the lavishly textured backgrounds fill every frame to bursting with eccentric detail. In this zoo, the story may be tame, but the images, and the imagination that releases them, run wild.” - Jessica Kiang, Variety
"A wondrous vision - itself a mythical creature in the context of cinema." - Emily Maskell, Little White Lies
Wednesday, June 17, 8:00 p.m. | This vibrant and violent animated fantasy feature by comic book artist and filmmaker Dash Shaw follows cryptozookeepers Lauren and Joan through a richly-drawn hallucinatory world as they struggle to track and capture a baku (a legendary dream-eating hybrid creature) supposedly protecting it from competing evil forces. As the search spirals into ever thornier situations, the zookeepers begin to wonder if they should display these rare beasts in the confines of a zoo, or if these mythical creatures should remain hidden and unknown. Set in 1960’s San Francisco, the film mimics paranoid thrillers of that era featuring voice talents Lake Bell, Zoe Kazan, Alex Kapovsky and Michael Cera playing a mix of free-wheeling hippies, radical animal activists, and shadowy government agents. Transgressive and trippy with a dry sense of humor, CRYPTOZOO looks sideways at grand utopian projects and questions altruistic impulses.
Awards & Nominations
Winner - 2021 Sundance Film Festival NEXT Innovator Award
Winner - 2021 Berlinale International Film Festival Generation 14+ Special Mention Award
Winner - 2021 SFFILM Festival Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award
Bleak Week (Animated!) | June 12–17, 2026
In partnership with the American Cinematheque and Music Box Theatre, we are thrilled to participate in Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair. Given animation’s limitless potential to inscribe the darkest of worlds, the Siskel's iteration of Bleak Week focuses on animated films. Join us for this very special showcase of six movies from around the globe featuring a broad range of animation techniques for a communal (and hopefully cathartic) movie-watching experience like no other.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu