Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the upcoming Oscars, director Ciro Guerra’s (Wandering Shadows, The Wind Journeys) Embrace of the Serpent presents a breathtaking journey through the Colombian Amazon following the interwoven stories of two European explorers; one in the early 1900s, the other 40 years later.
Shot in mesmerising monochrome, the film’s rich visual texture captures the devastating effect of colonialism on the Amazon’s indigenous peoples.
Karamakate, the last surviving member of his tribe leads the two interlocking stories of European travellers in search for a rare and exotic plant with healing properties. Eschewing the hackneyed narrative of a white saviour and a noble ‘savage’, Guerra instead reverses the focus; filtering the Europeans’ journeys through Karamakate’s native perspective with a tone that recalls Apocalypse Now.
Full of visual flair, haunting mysticism and an unstoppable moral conviction, Embrace of the Serpent is by turns astonishing and terrifyingly ferocious; both a hypnotically beautiful ode to life in the Amazon and an unequivocally searing critique of the harrowing effects of colonialism.
