PREDATORS

description

A surprising exploration of the scintillating rise and staggering fall of the popular television show TO CATCH A PREDATOR, designed to hunt down child predators and lure them to a film set, where they would be interviewed and arrested.

A cultural sensation from its inception in the early 2000s, Dateline NBC’s candid-camera investigative series TO CATCH A PREDATOR ensnared sex offenders while cameras rolled. The show was a hit and transformed its host Chris Hansen into moral crusader and TV star, while spawning a worldwide industry of imitators and vigilantes. Looking back on the program, and the franchises it spawned, filmmaker David Osit (CUFF.Docs 2015 selection THANK YOU FOR PLAYING) turns his camera on journalists, actors, law enforcers, academics, and ultimately himself, to trace America's obsession with watching people at their lowest. PREDATORS delves into the murk of human nature to observe hunter, predator, subject and spectator alike, all ensnared in a complicated web of entertainment as far as the eye can see.

OFFICIAL SELECTION
Sundance Film Festival 2025
True/False Film Festival 2025
CPH:DOX 2025

DIRECTOR'S BIO
David Osit is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director, editor and composer. His most recent film MAYOR won a Peabody and Emmy Award, was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, and holds a 100% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. David directed, produced, edited, filmed and composed the feature documentary THANK YOU FOR PLAYING (CUFF.Docs 2015 Selection), which was nominated for three Emmy awards, winning for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary. His other editing, producing and composing credits include OFF FRAME and NO MAN’S LAND. David’s feature directorial debut, BUILDING BABEL, premiered at True/False in 2012 and broadcast as the series premiere of PBS’s America Reframed in 2013. His work as an editor and consulting editor includes PROCESSION (Netflix), CRIME + PUNISHMENT (Hulu) and THE VOW (HBO). He holds a BA in Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Michigan as a Wallenberg Fellow and studied Refugee Law at the American University in Cairo.