Embrace of the Serpent

Institute History

  • 2016 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize

Embrace of the Serpent won an award at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight. This marks director Ciro Guerra’s first film at the Sundance Film Festival.

In 1909, Karamakate, a reclusive shaman in the Amazon, is sought out by sick German scientist Theodor Koch-Grünberg, seeking a cure for his condition. Resentful yet curious of the white man’s knowledge of his lost tribe, Karamakate agrees to lead him to the rare, sacred yakruna plant that can heal him. The men navigate the serpentine river and uncover secrets of the jungle surrounded by the impending savagery of colonialism. Forty years later, a similar scene unfolds when an American, basing his expedition on Koch-Grünberg’s published diary, encounters Karamakate and unknowingly asks him to fulfill this unfinished mission.

Remarkably merging past and present, Embrace of the Serpent enlightens us through the dialogue generated between two tribes divided by their great cultural distance. With spellbinding black-and-white cinematography, and hovering camera used to heighten the lure and vibrations of the Amazon, filmmaker Ciro Guerra has ventured deep to create a masterpiece of cosmic dimensions that invokes the memory of Earth’s forgotten civilizations.

— Christine Davila

Screening Details

Sundance Film Festival Awards

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