In 2015, O’Neill and Eline Jongsma won the Tim Hetherington Trust Award, which they used to help produce their follow-up to Empire, The Ark, a VR documentary about the fight to save the Northern White Rhino from extinction. Shot in California and Africa, the project focuses on parallel stories: Scientists in San Diego attempting in vitro fertilization to revive the species—of which only three remain—and workers on Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy guarding the remaining rhinos from poachers. The Ark had its world premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival in the Storyscapes section.
