“Embrace of the Serpent” is Ciro Guerra (recently named by Variety as one of Ten Directors to Watch in 2016)’s soulful, strange and stunning new film that has just been announced as part of the Spotlight section of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Guerra’s (“The Wind Journeys”) blistering and poetic film is Colombia’s official Oscar® entry for Best Foreign Language Film and is the winner of eight Macondo awards, Colombia’s equivalent of the Academy Awards®, including Best Film and Best Director.
The ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in “Embrace of the Serpent,” the first film shot in the Amazonian rainforest in over 30 years. Filmed in stunning black-and-white, the film centers on Karamakate (portrayed in various stages by Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolívar Salvado), an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists (Evans and Theo, portrayed by Brionne Davis and Jan Bijvoet) 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 Kock-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.
“Embrace of the Serpent” premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the top prize, the CIACE Art Cinema Award and also played at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival and AFI Fest 2015. The film was awarded the Golden Astor at the 2015 Mar Del Plata International Film Festival, and is nominated for the 2015 Film Independent Spirit Award for Best International Film. Oscilloscope Laboratories will release the film in New York on Wednesday, February 17, 2016 and in Los Angeles on Friday, February 19, 2016, with a national rollout to follow.
