Embrace of the Serpent
Indigenous Peoples • 2h 4m
Directed by Ciro Guerra • Drama • With Nilbio Torres, Antonio Bolívar, Jan Bijvoet • 2015 • 125 minutes
At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, the third feature by Ciro Guerra. Filmed in stunning black-and-white, SERPENT centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists who, over the course of 40 years, build a friendship with him. The film was inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers (Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes) who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred and difficult-to-find psychedelic Yakruna plant.
—2015 Cannes Film Festival
—2016 Sundance Film Festival
Up Next in Indigenous Peoples
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Expedition Content
Directed by Ernst Karel & Veronika Kusumaryati • Documentary • 2020 • 78 minutes
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An immersive marvel of sonic ethnography, Expedition Content draws on audio recordings made by recent college graduate...
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Lapü
Directed by Juan Pablo Polanco, César Alejandro Jaimes • Documentary • 2019 • 75 minutes
On a windy night in the Colombian desert, a young Wayúu woman named Doris sleeps in her hammock and has a dream that she reunites with a deceased cousin. When she awakens and shares the encounter with her g...
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Spears From All Sides
Directed by Christopher Walker • Documentary • 2019 • 90 minutes
Since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, Ecuador’s Waorani tribe, have defended their Amazon rainforest with spears. In the 1950’s American missionaries cleared the way for oil companies to enter Waorani lands. Now 70% of Ec...
