Zachary Zezima is an animation director based in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from Parsons The New School for Design and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). His work frequently includes elements of psychology, the body, interpersonal relationships, science-fiction, and autobiography.
Beginning as an illustrator, his work has appeared in The New York Times, on the cover of American Illustration 31, and he was nominated for an Ignatz Award in 2013. Moving into animation in 2014, his first short film CRUISING was nominated for the Golden Dove Award at DOK Leipzig and won Honorable Mention from the Adobe Design Achievement Awards as well as Best Experimental Film at Animation Block Party.
His subsequent short film entitled It’s a Date was released in 2016 and screened at film festivals such as Sundance, Pictoplasma, Ars Electronica, and Animafest Zagreb, and was a Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere. His most recent short film, Friend of a Friend, premiered at Annecy in 2020 and has also screened at film festivals such as Slamdance, Stuttgart, and Guanajuato. It was nominated for a UniFrance Short Film Award, won the Special Jury Award at the Anilogue International Animation Festival, and Best International Short Animated Film at the Oscar/BAFTA-qualifying Go Short International Short Film Festival.
Shifting into documentaries, in 2021 he directed animation for an episode of PRIDE; a six-part docuseries on FX/Hulu detailing LGBTQ+ civil rights throughout six distinct decades. He is currently in pre-production on a new animated documentary film which investigates the colonial history of surfing and its connections to contemporary surf culture.