Film Forum

Set in the Colombian Amazon, EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT has been called visually “mesmerizing” and “stunning,” as it tells the story of two Western explorers who search for rare botanical species in this most remote and lush of South American jungles. Based on the diaries of two white men who travelled in the region, one in 1909, and the other 30 years later – the film, nonetheless, has as its protagonist a native shaman who, first as a young man and then as a much older one, acts as their guide. Karamakate is no naïf. He’s tough-minded and astute about the ravages brought by the white man’s colonialism, his missionaries and rapacious rubber industry.  Under the spell of their guide, the explorers unwittingly become entranced by a sense of time that is more circular than linear and experience spectacular hallucinogenic dreams and desires. In the words of one critic: “It’s a hell of a trip.” 

COLOMBIA / VENEZUELA / ARGENTINA • 2015 • 125 MINS. • IN SPANISH AND AMAZONIAN TRIBAL LANGUAGES WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES • OSCILLOSCOPE LABORATORIES

Reviews

WINNER! Directors’ Fortnight top prize 
2015 Cannes Film Festival

“CRITIC’S PICK. Majestic, spellbinding…potentially life-changing. A fantastical mixture of myth and historical reality... Beautiful isn’t a strong enough word to describe its scenes of the heaving waters of the Amazon and its tributaries, on which two explorers, separated by more than 30 years, navigate in canoes, accompanied by a shaman.”
– Stephen Holden, The New York Times
Read the full review here.
Read Nicholas Casey’s New York Times feature on the film here.

“CRITIC’S PICK. A LEGITIMATE STUNNER. BEAUTIFUL AND FEROCIOUS.”
– Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice
Read the full review here.

“GRADE: A-. STUNNING. A truly original experience for the mind and the soul. Shot in gorgeous black and white, the film has the hypnotic look of Sebastiao Salgado’s South American photographs crossed with Werner Herzog’s jungle visionquests, FITZCARRALDO and AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD.”
– Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly

“Fanatically detailed and starkly visionary… The sharp, spare dialogue captures the meeting of penetrating minds with differing world views; a scene of a Christian mission gone to seed offers a terrifying tableau of cultural corruption that’s worthy of Buñuel.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Rapturously beautiful.”
– Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

“A dazzlingly elegiac reverie about the ravages of colonialism on Amazonian tribes. Mesmerizing style. Wondrously weird.”
– Stephen Garrett, New York Observer

“The latest visual astonishment from the gifted Colombian writer-director Ciro Guerra. There’s no denying the film’s chastening moral conviction or the transfixing power of its black-and-white imagery. At once blistering and poetic, not just an ethnographic study but also a striking act of cinematic witness.”
  – Justin Chang, Variety

“A visually mesmerizing exploration of man, nature and the destructive powers of colonialism… Marks an impressively realized third feature from Colombian writer-director Ciro Guerra, featuring knockout black-and-white cinematography and an array of breathtaking locations.”
– Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“Simply a work of art, and one of the most singular cinematic experiences you could hope to have in Cannes, or anywhere really. It’s an absorbing, even thrilling head trip. It is a Heart-of-Darkness voyage of discovery. It is a lament for all the lost plants and peoples of the world.”
– Jessica Kiang, Indiewire/The Playlist