Festival Director Steve Galster Featured in GQ

Festival Director Steve Galster featured in a 7 1/2 page article in Summer issue of GQ! ‘Hunting the Elusive Rhino Horn Cartel’ focuses on Steve’s mission of bringing down a major smuggling syndicate in Thailand.

“The nerve center of Steve Galster’s operation is tucked inconspicuously into a back alley in central Bangkok, in a low-slung villa. The building’s tranquil courtyard features a turtle-filled pond and a garden shaded by lush palms and hardwoods. Inside, where his Freeland Foundation does business, the mood is less serene.

In one windowless office, Galster’s obsession is splayed across an entire wall—a tangled collage of data that represents the organizational structure of Hydra. Looking something like John Nash’s wall of feverish scribblings in A Beautiful Mind, the diagram has taken Galster years to assemble and has required the service of high-powered analytic software as well as old-fashioned covert sleuthing. It’s a blizzard of headshots, birth dates, maps, government ID numbers, biographical text blocks, and hundreds of crisscrossing lines that delineate pecking orders, family relationships, and criminal connections. It’s a map of secrets: a field guide, Galster says, of “who’s who in the zoo.””

Steve is doing incredible work around the globe to help stop human and wildlife trafficking. He is bringing this passion to the Freeland Film Festival, which gives a platform to share these important stories and global issues.

Check out the full GQ article here