The film’s footage is therefore astonishing, uplifting, magical, and mysterious, even as the wee humans who become Flaco’s character witnesses over the course of “Wild Inside” grapple with the paradoxes and dilemmas.

Wild Inside is also at its best when it centers on the people, on the ways that everyone chose to define themselves in relation to the bird. The story is at once poetic and delusional and solipsistic and beautiful.

What makes “Wild Inside” such a moving and even wrenching experience is that we’re stirred by the creature Flaco was, and it’s the story he lived that made him that creature.

The latest documentary from director Penny Lane examines an escaped zoo bird in NYC and looks at the issues surrounding its life and death.