Embrace of the Serpent

Embrace of the Serpent (2015)

El abrazo de la serpiente

A poetic and haunting journey into a lost world.

The epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.

Date of release
2015-05-25
TMDB
7.7 / 10 (536)
Runtime
2h 5m
Genres
Drama, Adventure
Director
Ciro Guerra

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $1.5M
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 3. Including: Alfred P. Sloan Prize

Embrace of the Serpent is a 2015 internationally co-produced adventure drama film directed by Ciro Guerra, and written by Guerra and Jacques Toulemonde Vidal. Shot almost entirely in black and white, the film follows two journeys made thirty years apart by the indigenous shaman Karamakate in the Colombian Amazonian jungle, one with Theo, a German ethnographer, and the other with Evan, an American botanist, both of whom are searching for the rare plant yakruna. It was inspired by the travel diaries of Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes, and dedicated to lost Amazonian cultures.

Production

Before production started, the director spent two and a half years researching the Colombian Amazon. They discovered a part of the jungle in the north west that had not yet been heavily affected by tourism or commerce and after gaining permission from the local community, they decided on the location.

Embrace of the Serpent was filmed in the Amazonía region of Colombia. Seven weeks were spent filming in the Department of Vaupés, and one week in the Department of Guainía. Location details include:

Cerros de Mavicure – three mounds that form part of the westernmost part of the Guiana Shield in northern South America.

Fluvial Star Inírida – a Ramsar Wetland that includes part of the Inírida River.

Vaupés River – tributary of the Amazon River that forms part of the international border between Colombia and Brazil.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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