The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

“A true-life story so rife with melodrama, exotic lifestyles, sexual intrigue, and suspicious deaths that it’s surprising no film has been made about it until now.”—Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

Darwin meets Hitchcock in this true-crime tale of paradise found and lost. The Galapagos Affair is a fascinating documentary portrait of a 1930s murder mystery as strange and alluring as the famous archipelago itself. Fleeing conventional society, a Berlin doctor and his mistress start a new life on uninhabited Floreana Island. But after the international press sensationalizes the exploits of the Galapagos’ “Adam and Eve,” others flock there—including a self-styled Swiss Family Robinson and a gun-toting Viennese baroness and her two lovers. Things would never be the same. To bring this extraordinary story to life, the directors nimbly interweave newly unearthed home movies of these original settlers, testimonies of modern-day islanders, stunning footage of native flora and fauna, and powerful voice performances by Cate Blanchett and others. (120 mins., DCP)