Sundance 2025: True crime and true lies in films about the Zodiac killer and China’s dating culture

The Sundance Film Festival (January 23-February 2) includes an Indian production in its World Cinema Dramatic Competition section – Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda – and a host of documentaries.

Two titles in the non-fiction category play with real-life expectations as well as filmmaking conventions. While Zodiac Killer Project is a meta-examination of the true crime show, The Dating Game looks at Chinese men hunting for romantic partners.

Zodiac Killer Project: A playful post mortem

Filmmaker Charlie Shackleton is not alone in his fascination for the unidentified serial killer known as the Zodiac, who operated in San Francisco in 1968 and 1969. There have been far too many shows and films about the man who remains the subject of an open investigation. The obsession with nabbing the Zodiac was itself the theme of David Fincher’s well-received fiction feature Zodiac (2007).

Shackleton too might have notched up a contribution to the Zodiac sub-genre if he had managed to get the rights to one of the many books on the subject. He didn’t – but he made a film anyway. The result is an inventive and thoughtful meta-documentary about the very form of the true crime show.

Zodiac Killer Project begins at a parking lot where, several decades before, San Francisco police officer Lyndon E Lafferty laid eyes on...

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