Event Info
Ciro Guerra, Colombia, 2015, 124mins
A special WOW Film Festival screening celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Ciro Guerra’s Oscar-nominated Embrace of the Serpent. Seen through the eyes of Karamakate, the last surviving shaman of his tribe, the film follows his journey guiding two Western scientists, decades apart, through the Colombian Amazon in search of the sacred Yakruna plant. Told in striking black-and-white, it explores the devastating effects of colonialism, religion, and exploitation on indigenous cultures and the environment, while honoring the resilience and enduring spirit of the Amazon. Inspired by the travel diaries of Theodor Koch Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes, this landmark film remains a cinematic masterpiece of global storytelling.
This screening will feature a special introduction by artist-filmmaker and researcher Mars da Silva Saude, whose work engages with 16mm film, landscape, documentation, speculative fiction, radical politics, and text(s). Mars teaches on the MA Documentary: Landscape and Ecology programme at Aberystwyth University and brings decolonial, degrowth, neurodivergent, and transfeminist approaches to their analysis of film and culture.
