Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?

How can we build more humane zoos? Will it ever be ethical to build them at all? And what drives us to create zoos and natural history museums in the first place? Is it a curiosity about the world around us and our place in it, or a need to dominate and give order to a realm that we’d otherwise find chaotic and threatening? An engrossing chronicle of zoos and natural history museums from Charles Darwin to the early 21st century, the documentary Curiosity and Control (2018) contemplates how humanity’s relationship with the natural world has evolved over the past two centuries, as well as where it might be headed in the future. The Swedish director Albin Biblom enlists an impressive array of writers, professors, zoo directors, taxidermists and artists to explore these intricate, interconnected questions of science, history and ethics. In doing so, he builds a complex, thought-provoking portrait of our ever-evolving view of the animal world, including our place in it.

For another powerful reflection on humanity’s relationship with the nonhuman animal world, watch Biblom’s film The Conquest of Space, which tells the story of the fruit flies, primates, canines and other creatures that we’ve launched into Earth’s orbit.