The Colombian film Embrace of the Serpent / El abrazo de la serpiente by Ciro Guerra was the winner of the top prize, the Art Cinema Award, at the 47th edition of Directors’ Fortnight, the independent parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival.
Guerras’ third feature film -his follow-up to the Wind Journeys- is inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.
It tells 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.
The most recent Latin American film to have won the Art Cinema Award was Pablo Larraín’s No from Chile in 2012. Colombian cinema has performed well at Cannes this year, as César Acevedo’s Land and Shade / Tierra y sombra from the South American country was also awarded with two prizes in the Critics Week section of the festival.
The 47th edition of the Directors’ Fortnight took place May 14-24 at Cannes, France.
