''The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden'' is a 2013 feature-length documentary directed by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine. It is about a series of unsolved disappearances on the Galapagos island of Floreana in the 1930s among the largely European expatriate residents at the time. The voice cast includes Cate Blanchett,

Sebastian Koch Sebastian Koch (born 31 May 1962) is a German television and film actor. He is known for roles in the 2007 Academy Award-winning film ''The Lives of Others'', in Steven Spielberg's '' Bridge of Spies'', and as Otto Düring in the fifth season of ...

Thomas Kretschmann Thomas Kretschmann (; born 8 September 1962) is a German actor who has appeared in many European and American films. His notable roles include Lieutenant Hans von Witzland in '' Stalingrad'' (1993), Hauptmann Wilm Hosenfeld in '' The Pianist'' ( ...

Diane Kruger Diane Kruger ( Heidkrüger; ; born 15 July 1976) is a German and American actress. Early in her career, Kruger gained worldwide recognition and received the Trophée Chopard from the Cannes Film Festival. Kruger became known for her roles in ...

Connie Nielsen Connie Inge-Lise Nielsen (born 3 July 1965) is a Danish actress. She has starred as Lucilla in the film ''Gladiator'' (2000) and as Hippolyta in the DC Extended Universe, and in the films ''Wonder Woman'' (2017), '' Justice League'' (2017), '' ...

Josh Radnor Joshua Thomas Radnor (born July 29, 1974) is an American actor, filmmaker, author, and musician. He is best known for portraying Ted Mosby on the popular and Emmy Award–winning CBS sitcom ''How I Met Your Mother''. He made his writing and dire ...

and

Gustaf Skarsgård Gustaf Caspar Orm Skarsgård (born 12 November 1980) is a Swedish actor. He is known for his roles in ''Evil'' (2003), '' The Way Back'' (2010) and ''Kon-Tiki'' (2012). He also appeared in the HBO TV series ''Westworld'' (2018), as Merlin in t ...

. It features the

1934 Events January–February * January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established. * January 15 – The 8.0 Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a maxi ...

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) ...

The Empress of Floreana ''The Empress of Floreana'' is a 1934 silent adventure short film made on Floreana Island by a millionaire captain who originally came with a crew to visit the Galápagos Islands for purposes of zoology. The crew chose to visit Floreana because of ...

'' in its entirety, but the four-minute short is split into halves.

Cast (voices)

* Cate Blanchett as Dore Strauch *

as Heinz Wittmer *

as Friedrich Ritter *

Margret Wittmer Margret Wittmer (1904-2000) was one of the original settlers of Floreana Island. She was born in Cologne on 12 July 1904. Margret, her husband Heinz, and her stepson Harry moved to Floreana Island in 1932, following the arrival of German doctor ...

as Baroness Von Wagner *

as John Garth *

as Rolf Blomberg

Release

The film premiered at the 40th

Telluride Film Festival The Telluride Film Festival (TFF) is a film festival held annually in Telluride, Colorado during Labor Day weekend (the first Monday in September). The 49th edition took place on September 2 -6, 2022. History First held on 30 August 1974, t ...

on September 2, 2013. It was an official selection of the

Hamptons International Film Festival The Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) is an international film festival founded in 1992, by Joyce Robinson. The festival has since taken place every year in East Hampton, New York. It is usually an annual five-day event in mid-October ...

on October 12, 2013, and

Berlin International Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the fest ...

on February 10, 2014. It opened theatrically in the US on April 4, 2014.

Critical response

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 83% based on 53 reviews, with an average rating of 6.92/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "It doesn't quite live up to its marvelously lurid premise, but ''The Galapagos Affair'' is still stranger than fiction in a very entertaining way." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score of 69 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

References

External links

*
Q&A with directors
at HamptonsFilmFest.org 2013 films Films set on the Galápagos Islands 2013 documentary films American documentary films Documentary films about crime 2010s English-language films 2010s American films {{2010s-documentary-film-stub