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Wild Inside is filmmaker Penny Lane’s captivating documentry about Flaco, a singularly determined Eurasian eagle-owl who (woot woot) escaped his captivity at the New York’s Central Park Zoo in February 2023 and, soaring free over Manhattan, became an icon of inspiration for New Yorkers and millions of fans world wide. Lane uses archival footage of Flaco in flight and perched on favorite tree limbs or highrise window sills, mixed with on camera interviews with Flaco fans, followers and conservationists who teamed up to track his whereabouts and welfare.

One of the best documentaries so far this year, Wild Inside is as layered and textured as the thick wrap of feathers enveloping Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl whose year of living free albiet dangerously in New York City earned him a rightful place in urban lore. Director Penny Lane charts how Falco seduced the city after he escaped from captivity in the Central Park Zoo in 2023. As is true of most stellar documentaries about animals and birds, Wild Inside is ultimately about human beings. Besides Falco, the stars of this film are a small band of avid birders and photographers who followed Falco’s journey from the first day he appeared free — standing on the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue, just outside of Central Park — to when he spread his wings and set out to explore the rest of Manhattan.

New Yorkers are a famously jaded bunch, to the point that when an owl with a six-foot wingspan wound up on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk one night, few seemed to give a hoot. That all soon changed, as the owl—a zoo escapee named Flaco—soon captured the hearts of people around the city and the world. Director Penny Lane’s enchanting documentary Wild Inside follows Flaco through a fateful year of freedom after someone cut through his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo in February 2023. The male Eurasian eagle-owl—one of the largest types of owls in the world—had hatched in captivity and lived at the zoo for about thirteen years before he ventured through the cut mesh and into the spotlight.