"Embrace of the Serpent isn't a heavy-handed movie with a moral so much as a surreal and transporting parable, told from the perspective of one tribe's last standard bearer." —Stephanie Merry, Washington Post

"While Guerra clearly owes a debt to Herzog and Coppola, he blazes his own trail. I can't wait to take this trip again."—Charlotte O'Sullivan, London Evening Standard

"It is surely one of the most beautiful films in a long time."—Paul Byrnes, Sydney Morning Herald

At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in Embrace of the Serpent, the third feature from Ciro Guerra. Filmed in stunning black and white, the film centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists who, over the course of 40 years, build a friendship with him. The film was inspired by the real life journals of two explorers who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred and the difficult-to-find psychedlic plant Yakruna plant.