Embrace of the Serpent (2016)

Director
Ciro Guerra

Main cast
Brionne Davis; Jan Bijvoet; Luigi Sciamanna; Nilbio Torres; Antonio Bolivar

Genres
Drama, Adventure

Description
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.


Similar movies

Three American brothers who have not spoken to each other in a year set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other -- to become brothers again like they used to be. Their "spiritual quest", however, veers rapidly off-course (due to events involving over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray).
Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories, The Fountain is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world.
A soul-searching comedic adventure set among famous red rocks and vortexes of Sedona, Arizona, visitors to the mystical town encounter eccentric characters and a series of calamities that lead them to unexpected miracles.
TV weatherman Bill Harding is trying to get his tornado-hunter wife, Jo, to sign divorce papers so he can marry his girlfriend Melissa. But Mother Nature, in the form of a series of intense storms sweeping across Oklahoma, has other plans. Soon the three have joined the team of stormchasers as they attempt to insert a revolutionary measuring device into the very heart of several extremely violent tornados.
El Topo decides to confront warrior Masters on a trans-formative desert journey he begins with his 6 year old son, who must bury his childhood totems to become a man. El Topo (the mole) claims to be God, while dressed as a gunfighter in black, riding a horse through a spiritual, mystical landscape strewn with old Western movie, and ancient Eastern religious symbols. Bandits slaughtered a village on his path, so El Topo avenges the massacred, then forcibly takes their leader's woman Mara as his. El Topo's surreal way is bloody, sexual and self-reflective, musing of his own demons, as he tries to vanquish those he encounters.
Adopted, 12-year-old Salla lives in Lapland. After she rescues some wolf cubs from a poacher, her mission to keep them safe helps her reunite with her mother, who shares her mysterious connection with nature.
Epic account of the thief Barabbas, who was spared crucifixion when Pilate manipulated the crowd into pardoning him, rather than Jesus. Struggling with his spirituality, Barabbas goes through many ordeals leading him to the gladiatorial arena, where he tries to win his freedom and confront his inner demons, ultimately becoming a follower of the man who was crucified in his place.
The only hope for humanity to survive a natural disaster is to detonate a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles.
Based on James Redfield's worldwide best-selling novel, The Celestine Prophecy is a spiritual adventure film chronicling the discovery of ancient scrolls in the rainforests of Peru. The prophecy and its nine key insights predict a worldwide awakening, arising within all religious traditions, that moves humanity toward a deeper experience of spirituality.
Out of Nature is a journey inside Martins head. A family father in his 30s living in a small town of Norway. He feels alienated in his own life and longs to get away. Away from his job, away from his family, into the woods, up to the mountains. While spending a weekend alone on a hiking trip, he is forced to confront the way he lives his life. Out of Nature is an original, funny and tender film about how to take part in your own life as a husband, father and son.
From the creators of You Can Heal Your Life: The Movie comes a compelling portrait of three modern lives in need of new direction and new meaning. In his first-ever movie, Wayne Dyer explores the spiritual journey in the second half of life when we long to find the purpose that is our unique contribution to the world. The powerful shift from the ego constructs we are taught early in life by parents and society—which promote an emphasis on achievement and accumulation—are shown in contrast to a life of meaning, focused on serving and giving back. Filmed on coastal California’s spectacular Monterey Peninsula, The Shift captures every person’s mid-life longing for a more purposeful, soul-directed life.
A justice drama based on a true story about a man on death row who in his last days forms a strong relationship with a nun who teaches him forgiveness and gives him spirituality as she accompanies him to his execution. Susan Sarandon won an Oscar for best female actress for her convincing portrayal of Sister Helen Prejean.
The selfish Dr. André Luiz dies and awakes in the limbo called "Umbral". After a painful period in the gruesome swamp, he is rescued and brought in a white light to "Nosso Lar" (meaning "Our Home"). He finds a place of harmony, where people live in peace awaiting
As the seasons change in a Connecticut town, two men of different age and backgrounds who work together outdoors for the local park system, share thoughts and feelings that gradually deepen into a relationship approaching father and son. Paul is just out of prison for armed robbery, assigned to work with Murph, a middle-aged vet whose grown son Bobby is dying. Paul is trying to control his temper and build a spiritual side based on reading. Murph is a down-to-earth Sancho Panza to Paul's more ethereal ideas. And Murphy seems to need forgiveness for mistakes as a dad. As Murphy's retirement approaches and winter sets in, the men talk and love blossoms.
13 year old Kim feels at home in the wilderness. One night, nature's soul appears to him in the form of an Indian, and designates him nature's protector.
I Origins follows a molecular biologist studying the evolution of the human eye. He finds his work permeating his life after a brief encounter with an exotic young woman who slips away from him. As his research continues years later with his lab partner, they make a stunning scientific discovery that has far reaching implications and complicates both his scientific and and spiritual beliefs. Traveling half way around the world, he risks everything he has ever known to validate his theory.
Gie is a 2005 Indonesian film directed by Riri Riza. The film tells the story of Soe Hok Gie, a graduate from University of Indonesia who is known as an activist and nature lover. The film is based on a diary Catatan Seorang Demonstran written by Soe himself. The plot of this film is an interpretation of the filmmakers, and scenes portraying Soe's private life may be partly fictionalised for dramatisation.
Mother Nature gets revenge on some careless campers in this remastered version of the Australian horror classic.
Against a backdrop of clashing cultures, John Myron and Angela Wilson find each other and over the years form a powerful bond. One tragic night, John rescues Angela from a wicked act of betrayal. Faced with its aftermath, Angela flees town, unaware that she has put into motion a dramatic and intense string of events that will forever change the course of their lives. Harboring a secret, John guides Angela to a shocking realization that will uncover the past. A dramatic contemporary love story combining elements of spirituality, heart and integrity.
An unknown middle-aged batter named Roy Hobbs with a mysterious past appears out of nowhere to take a losing 1930s baseball team to the top of the league in this magical sports fantasy. With the aid of a bat cut from a lightning struck tree, Hobbs lives the fame he should have had earlier when, as a rising pitcher, he is inexplicably shot by a young woman.
Driven by his struggle against the illness that would ultimately prove fatal, Monteiro fervently devoted himself to his deeply personal last work, a musically structured meditation on spirituality and desire in which he heroically cast himself in the lead role as an eccentric libertine drifting wide-eyed through a sun-drenched Lisbon. A consciously terminal film, Come and Go offers a poetic summation of Monteiro’s fascination with the body as the most irreverent and mysterious of temples, staging a series of playfully austere encounters between the visibly infirm and prematurely aged director and the women with whom he engages in erotic, linguistic and theological debates.
Daniela, raised in the bosom of a strict Evangelical family and recently unmasked as a fornicator by her shocked parents, struggles to find her own path to spiritual harmony.
Set during a retreat of Christian Democrat politicians who practice spiritual exercises together, it is an allegory of corrupted power. Disturbing, claustrophobic settings are the background to a series of mysterious crimes. (MoMA)
Scripted by four of Australia’s greatest authors (David Williamson, Thomas Keneally, Hal Porter and Craig McGregor), this quartet of carnal desires explores adultery and jealous fantasies, the end of innocence, the moral and spiritual conflicts of a priest and a nun in love. The stories define the exploration of women and the cultural upheaval of the early 70s.
A televsion reporter tasked with making a feature about Jean Jacques Rousseau's upcoming 300th birthday uses a local Swiss boy with a remarkable knowledge about the philosopher as her angle for the feature. She then brings in a local professor and Rousseau expert to try to explain how this boy could possibly know so much about a philosopher who died over a hundred years before he was even born. What unfolds is a story about friendship, nature, and the unequal distribution of wealth.
Physical attractions appear to be the obvious explanation for two people to become a pair. But are they really the reflection of something sublime, everlasting or dare we say, spiritual? Do relationships start in the bedroom or in the heart? In this male love story, the bliss described by Joseph Campbell and sages throughout the millennia is a practical option for finding happiness. As the camera delves into the character’s minds and actions we find fulfillment on both a physical and spiritual level.
THE WAR WITHIN is a unique fantasy that takes viewers to a world that only God can see; the world of the inner man. Michael Sinclair (Brett Varvel) is a syndicated cartoonist whose dream of a perfect life is upended when tragic events transform his dream into a nightmare. The result is a war that wages within his soul which is personified by six members; Mind, Memory, Emotion, Will, Conscience, and Heart. The ensuing battle for control adversely effects his relationship with his wife Amy (Rebecca Reid) and causes Michael to doubt his faith in God. But in the midst of this spiritual test, Michael discovers that victory is found in surrender. As viewers follow the quest for answers inside of Michael, they may discover their own war within.
11-year-old Eliza Naumann comes from an odd family; they all divert their emotional frustrations into secret channels. When Eliza unexpectedly begins winning spelling bees, what had been a stable dynamic within the family becomes disrupted; long held secrets emerge, and a latent spiritual yearning is awakened in her withdrawn father Saul and compulsive mother Miriam. As Eliza moves closer and clos
Father Greg Pilkington (Linus Roache) is torn between his call as a conservative Catholic priest and his secret life as a homosexual with a gay lover, frowned upon by the Church. Upon hearing the confession of a young girl of her incestuous father, Greg enters an intensely emotional spiritual struggle deciding between choosing morals over religion and one life over another.
The story of a group of friends who reunite for their annual 4th of July weekend only to be confronted by Chad, a strange and beautiful nature photographer who begins to change their lives one by one.
A touching story about a white Gordon Setter with black ear, who became homeless because of his master's illness. His master, Ivan Ivanovich, a man far from being young, fond of hunting and nature, took a puppy to live with him, despite the dog's black ear being a "shame of nature" to his breed. The man always took his dog, whom he called Bim or Bimka, to hunting in country. Later, however Ivan Ivanovich began to have problems with heart and when the disease became worse was taken to a hospital. His dog couldn't bear waiting for the only person that ever cared for him and set out to find his master. Thus began the story of a homeless dog and his many breathtaking and exciting adventures, encounters of many people, kind and evil, and leads to an unexpected and heart-rending end.
Everything is not as it seems for a man who recovers from a plane crash in which his family is killed. After plastic surgery and rehabilitation, he determines that he worked for a secret agency for which he was an assassin. His former boss puts him back to work to assassinate a political leader, but when he proves unable to pull the trigger, it is he who becomes the target for assassins. As he avoids capture, the story unfolds about his true past and the reason why he has a tattoo of "chilly willy" inside his lip.
In this film that closely parallels his own life story, Richard Pryor plays Jo Jo Dancer, a popular stand-up comedian who has severely burned himself in a drug incident. As he lies unconscious in a hospital, his spiritual alter ego gets up and begins a journey of his own. He revisits his life, from growing up in a brothel as a child and struggling to beat the long odds to become a top rated comedian. However, his success brings new problems as he develops a tragic pattern of substance abuse that begins to screw up his life. All the while, Jo Jo's spirit watches these events and attempts to convince his past self to turn off from his path of self destruction. Written by Kenneth Chisholm
A young artists spends the night at a mysterious inn, where he meets a group of strange, sullen people, among them the innkeeper's beautiful daughter. What he doesn't know is that he has wandered into a kind of spiritual void, and the inn's residents are engaging in a battle over his soul.
A television program is interupted by a news network announcing that three meteors have hit the United States, France and China. At first it seems natural but after interviews by scientists and eyewitness seems to suggest that it is not. Three more meteors are coming and the various Earth governments combine forces to stop them.
When a tragedy shatters her plans for domestic bliss, a seemingly typical Southern newlywed gradually transforms into a spiritual seeker, quietly threatening the closest relationships around her.
The Nature of Nicholas is a surreal story of twelve-year-old Nicholas as he struggles with an attraction to his best friend.
Boston Blackie, in the 11th film of the Columbia series, indulges in some wit-trading with a squirmy spiritualist who deals in blackmail, murder and the occult. "Blackie" out to help his pal, "Runt," recover some jewels, finds himself involved in the homicides, and also finds himself as the prime suspect, and now has to find the real culprit in order to clear himself. So "Blackie,", a man of many talents and already a proved magician from cases past, shows he knows a little bit about dancing skeletons, walking phantoms and spiritualism himself, and holds a séance to unmask the murderer.
Bernadette has a yen to chuck it all and go back to nature, in this French-language Canadian film. That's just what she does after carefully leaving her wedding ring where her affluent husband, a lawyer, can see it. She has bought a farm, complete with a run-down farmhouse and a live-in cranky old man. Soon, because of the wonderful effects that her sympathy and her outsider's perspective have, her neighbors perceive great improvements in their lives. They attribute these changes to something miraculous (perhaps taking a cue from her name), and hordes of needy people descend on her farm.
Directed by Edward Dmytryk, The Reluctant Saint is based on the life of Saint Joseph of Cupertino. When young Giuseppe Diesa (Maximilian Schell) is sent to work at a monastery circa 17th century Italy -- his parents believed he was mentally challenged -- he surprises a local bishop by his incredible relationship with the monastery's animals. Believing this merits a traditional religious education, he is taken in and taught to pray, with miraculous results. His spiritual energy apparently allows him to levitate, which impressed many, and terrified others. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
Akasathinte Niram is a 2012 Malayalam film directed by Dr. Biju about the relationship of man, nature and life starring Indrajith and Amala Paul in the lead roles.
A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
Sharkey, part of the sinister world of child trade, picks up Vlado, an orphan of war, dreaming of freedom and a better life. They embark upon a strange and enlightening journey through war torn Bosnia. As they struggle to get out of the country and fight to stay alive, they find a special love and compassion from which emerges their ultimate moral and spiritual redemption.
The story of a disciplined and sexually driven man who keeps his family isolated in his home for years to protect them from the “evil nature” of human beings while inventing (with his wife) rat poison.
After the death of his beloved wife, a nobleman from northern Croatia turns to spiritualism refusing to accept that she's gone. She begins to appear in his presence and he starts to believe that she's alive.
Natural Selection is a story of triumph and absolution. It explores both sides of human nature, where love as well as hate are separated by a thread and the potential corrosion of ones soul by the influence of evil.
At the ripe old age of 30, Cameron Day has given up his chances at pro-basketball fame and settled into an aimless life. A chance encounter with a beautiful woman lands him smack in the middle of Southern California's pro beach volleyball scene. A naturally talented true athlete, he seems destined for sports stardom once again until his old demons start creeping in, threatening his chances at success.
A nightclub singer seeks refuge with gay nuns on dope in a Madrid convent.
When two estranged stepsisters inherit their father's nudist colony, getting back to nature has never been so completely unnatural.
Lazy, uneducated students mostly coming from money, share a very close band. They live together in the dormitory of this private highschool, where they daily plan their latest pranks on teachers or the other classes. When a new and obviously strict headmaster arrives, the students naturally try to overthrow him. A comic war of nitwits follows.
When David, an ex-monk still in his twenties meets Mark, he falls hard; soon he's asked Mark if they can live together. Things go well for awhile, and then differences in their definition of "commitment" begin to push them apart. Mark wants other sexual adventures, David tries to go along. Can they talk through the crisis in their relationship or is a breakup in the offing? David sees his relationship with Mark as a marriage, so if it ends, can David's heart ever heal?
In the 16th century, the daughter of a Spanish nobleman joins a convent and becomes a spiritual leader.
The Falls: Testament of Love is a continuation of the story of RJ Smith and Chris Merrill, two Mormon missionaries that fell in love during their mission in a small town in Oregon. The boys haven't spoken in five years, but when an unexpected tragedy compells them back to the Oregon town where they served, they find themselves, once again, thrust into one another's lives. As old feelings begin to surface they find themselves again facing difficult choices. If they pursue their desire to be together, RJ and Chris risk hurting the ones they care about as they embark on a spiritual journey to discover love, freedom, and happiness.
When a high school senior, Chris, gets in trouble with the West L.A. police for joy riding in stolen cars, his wealthy but neglectful dad hires Chris's older brother Lance to spend time with him and keep him out of trouble. Lance is in the underworld, running guns, so caring for Chris starts out as a good cover. Then, he warms to his brother, and the two develop a strong bond; Chris gets serious about school and starts to come out of his shell. But, will the relationship be strong enough to weather pressures from Lance's business, Chris's discovery that dad is paying Lance for the care, and Lance's enjoyment of female companionship?
Set in the world of mega-churches in which a former Deadhead-turned-born again-Christian finds himself on the run from fundamentalist members of his mega-church who will do anything to protect their larger-than-life pastor.
Cosmic Sex is a 2014 art-house Independent Bengali Film written and directed by Amitabh Chakraborty and produced by Putul Mahmood. The film deals with the connection between Sex and Spirituality.Cosmic Sex is the story of a young man Kripa who is on the run from sex and violence one night in Kolkata when he meets a woman Sadhavi who strangely resembles his dead mother. She gives him shelter and teaches him to travel inwards through sex. The film deals with Dehotatva (worshipping through one’s own body) and explores the connection between Sex and Spirituality. The film stars Rii Sen who won the best actress award at Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema for her bold act in the movie.[
Is a provocative, haunting, and compassionate examination of the isolating and often misunderstood path of personal redemption and spiritual service in contemporary society. Composed of alternating sequences of daytime and nighttime episodes, the film presents a recurring visual dichotomy that illustrates the polarizing division between wealth and poverty, spirituality and materialism, vanity and humility, selfishness and benevolence.
Enter the medieval world of Christine Carpenter, a visionary girl who is to become an Anchoress (walled-in recluse) so that she can "live in the Virgin's house forever." Based on actual letters that were written about such an Anchoress in 1325, the film follows Christine as she awakens to her own sensuality and explores her own female, earth-based spirituality
The Spanish branch of an American company is obliged to enforce the ban on smoking in their offices. From now on, those who want to smoke during working hours must do so in the street. Ramirez, one of the employees of this small office composed mainly of men, decides to begin collecting signatures against what he considers unfair. What Ramirez intends is to be use an unoccupied office as smoking room
This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain. In a provincial town, which is surrounded with nothing else but frost. It is bitterly cold weather — without snow. Even in this bewildered cold hundreds of people are standing around the circus tent, which is put up in the main square, to see — as the outcome of their wait — the chief attraction, the stuffed carcass of a real whale. The people are coming from everywhere. From the neighboring settlings, even from quite far away parts of the country. They are following this clumsy monster as a dumb, faceless, rag-wearing crowd. This strange state of affairs — the appearance of the foreigners, the extreme frost — disturbs the order of the small town. Ambitious personages of the story feel they can take advantage of this situation. The tension growing to the unbearable is brought to explosion by the figure of the Prince, who is pretending facelessness. Even his mere appearance is enough to break loose destructive emotions...

© Valossa 2015–2024