A documentary about the culling and commercial exploitation of kangaroos has opened with solid reviews and sold-out premieres in New York and Los Angeles.

"The response has been incredible," Bondi filmmaker Michael McIntyre told Fairfax via phone from LA, where he and co-director Kate McIntyre Clere had attended a premiere screening of Kangaroo: A Love Hate Story. "People here are really keen to know about kangaroos – and the issues regarding kangaroos."

Their film, four years in the making, features interviews with the likes of environmental historian Tim Flannery, ethicist Peter Singer and naturalist Terri Irwin, as well as a host of politicians, activists and farmers. But it is the footage of kangaroos being shot en mass, and of joeys being beaten to death (in order to save bullets), that has most captured the attention of American audiences and reviewers.

The Los Angeles Times has called it an "eye-opening investigative documentary" that "suggests the extent of an alarming animal-welfare crisis".