About me
Joshua Zeman is an award-winning filmmaker known for documentary storytelling that blends investigation, suspense, and emotional depth. His breakout film, Cropsey, helped redefine modern true crime doc filmmaking and remains one of the genre’s most acclaimed titles.
Zeman EP'd and directed The Killing Season, an eight part docu-series for A&E, produced by Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney. The series was the first to cover the then-unsolved Gilgo Beach murders and Zeman’s work led to several breakthroughs in the case. Zeman also directed Murder Mountain, a docu-series about the intersection of weed and murder for Netflix that’s been called “a must-watch” by Rolling Stone.
Continuing his work with Netflix, Zeman EP’d and directed The Sons of Sam, narrated by Oscar-nominated Paul Giamatti. That same year, Zeman directed The Loneliest Whale, a cinematic quest to find the ‘52 Hertz Whale’, which is believed to have spent its entire life in solitude. The film, released by Bleecker Street and EP’d by Leonardo DiCaprio, was nominated for 3 Critics Choice Awards and has called “a modern-day Moby Dick" by the LA Times.
Zeman’s latest film Checkpoint Zoo, profiling the rescue of 5,000 animals in the Russia-Ukraine War, premiered at Tribeca, winning an Audience Award and garnering rave reviews. The Daily Beast calls the film “a work of heart-stopping suspense and tenderness” and CNN calls it "beautiful and beyond moving.” The film has won 16 audience awards and was nominated for Critics Choice Award.
Zeman has also expanded into podcasting and digital journalism. He hosted Monster: Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer for TenderfootTV and iHeartRadio, a series that draws on his decades-long reporting on the Gilgo Beach case and Rex Heuermann. He also hosts the YouTube series Sinister with Josh Zeman, where he examines major criminal cases through in depth interviews, and firsthand investigative experience..
On the narrative side, Zeman’s first screenplay, Fresh Kills, was optioned by New Line and Forensic Films and his screenplay Collider earned him a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and the San Francisco Film Society Screenwriting Award. He also directed the short, The Best Man For The Job, starring Joseph Sikora (POWER).
As a producer/co-producer, some of Zeman’s past narrative credits include THE STATION AGENT (Audience Award and Screenwriting Award, Sundance Film Festival), MYSTERIOUS SKIN (Venice Film Festival, nominated for IFP Gotham Award), THE HAWK IS DYING (Sundance Film Festival, Directors Fortnight, Cannes) and AGAINST THE CURRENT (Sundance Film Festival).
