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Poster for Darwin's Nightmare

Darwin's Nightmare

2004 · 1h 47m Documentary
Directed by Hubert Sauper

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Overview

Some time in the 1960's, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced into Lake Victoria as a little scientific experiment. The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world. Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo… Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the dark center of the continent. This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
92%
Tomatometer
Fresh

The movie prefers to show snippets of life and let the audience make the connections. Many of these scenes prove memorable.

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press
Fresh

If Sauper is fired up by anti-globalist conviction, his instincts as an artist and as a man rule out any kind of rhetoric or cheapness.

David Denby, New Yorker
Fresh

The words Being poor is like being old are scrawled on the door of a shack; like this movie, it's a howl waiting to be heard.

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times
Fresh

Darwin's Nightmare is an urgent, horrific, yet at times oddly blinkered vision of the crisis of modern Africa.

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Fresh

In unflinching terms, it captures the hellish existence endured by the many so that the few may wallow in privilege.

Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly

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