Zackary Canepari

Zackary Canepari is a visual storyteller working in a variety of different mediums.

He began his career as a photojournalist in India/Pakistan before teaming with filmmaker Drea Cooper in 2010 and launching the documentary series California is a place, which screened at Sundance.

The success of the California series led Canepari to Flint, Michigan to film the documentary feature T-Rex, co-directed with Cooper, about teenage Olympic boxer and Flint native Claressa "T-Rex" Shields, which premiered at SXSW and was featured on PBS.

In 2016, Canepari was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his project Flint is a place, which consists of reportage, short films, found photos, virtual reality, interactive maps and archival material. The work was awarded in the 2017 World Press Photo Digital Storytelling Contest and Canepari was named 2016 Multimedia Photographer of the Year at the POYi Awards.

In 2018, Flint Town, a documentary series co-directed by Cooper and Jessica Dimmock about the Flint Police Department, was released on Netflix. The series was nominated for a Critics Choice Documentary and an IDA Documentary Award.

His latest film Fire in Paradise was awarded both an Emmy and an Edward R. Murrow award and was shortlisted for an Oscar. Canepari also won a second Emmy in 2020 for directing The Gallagher Effect, an episode of The New York Times television show on Hulu.