Variety has published its review of Wild Inside, Penny Lane's documentary about Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who escaped the Central Park Zoo and spent a year living wild in New York City. The film had its world premiere in Central Park on July 29, 2026, at 7:30 PM, presented by Sandbox Films, ahead of a theatrical release this month.

Flaco's story began on the evening of February 2, 2023, when someone cut the wire mesh on his cage at the Central Park Zoo. He had lived there for 13 years. A Eurasian eagle owl — a species not native to the Americas — with a wingspan of nearly six feet, Flaco turned up on a sidewalk near the corner of 50th Street and Fifth Avenue that same evening. The next day he flew into Central Park and settled high in a tree near the south end, opposite the Essex House.

Zoo representatives initially tried to recapture him using mosquito nets and dead white lab rats as bait. They eventually gave up. Flaco stayed out. Seth Meyers riffed on the escape on his late-night show, comparing it to moving into a nicer neighbourhood and "Shawshanking" out of the cage.

Lane's film follows Flaco and his human allies through the year he spent outside the zoo, drawing on footage sourced from New York City birders who tracked the owl across Manhattan. Hannah Buck edited the documentary. The Guardian describes the film as the story of how an escaped zoo owl brought New Yorkers together.

The Central Park premiere placed the film exactly where Flaco's free year unfolded — an outdoor screening in the park that served as his habitat after escape. The theatrical release follows, giving the documentary a conventional cinema run after its open-air debut.

For a film about a bird who never belonged in an enclosure, the setting was apt.