With: Nilbio Torres (young Karamakate), Antonio Bolivar (old Karamakate), Yauenkü Miguee (Manduca), Jan Bijvoet (Theo), Brionne Davis (Evan)
Director: Ciro Guerra
Producer: Cristina Gallego
Production co: Ciudad Lunar
Screenplay: Ciro Guerra, Jacques Toulemon de Vidal
Photography: David Gallego
Editors: Etienne Boussac, Cristina Gallego
Music: Nascuy Linares
REVIEWS

“An Amazonian shaman, the lone survivor of his tribe, is the commanding central presence in this hypnotic reversal of the jungle-explorer genre by Colombian director Ciro Guerra (The Wind Journeys). It’s majestically shot in the Amazon, in B&W so intensely rich and finely detailed that you might wish the world itself could do without colour.

The shaman Karmakate’s peregrinations are based on actual trips documented by two explorers, German ethnographer Theodor Koch-Grunberg, who visited in 1911, and American scientist Richard Evans Schultes, who followed in his footsteps with Koch-Grunberg’s journals for a guide, three decades later. The bitter irony is that, after the depredations of Christianity and the rubber trade, it’s through these men’s explorations that any record of the likes of Karamakate survives.

Intercutting between the shaman as a young man and as an older one guiding each of his alien visitors down the river, Guerra posits the opposite situation. He turns an indigenous eye on these stray Europeans who’ve become uneasy dependents, mocking them, seducing them with animism, and drawing on nature’s pharmacy to cure their ails and bend their minds.”

​— Bill Gosden, NZIFF 2015
FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Dunedin Film Society
Wednesday, 8 March, 7.30pm
 
Nelson Film Society
Thursday, 23 March, 6.00pm 
 
Hamilton Film Society
Monday, 1 May, 8.00pm
 
Whanganui Film Society
Monday, 29 May, 7.00pm
 
Canterbury Film Society
Monday, 12 June, 7.45pm
 
Palmerston North Film Society
Monday, 19 June, 6.00pm
 
New Plymouth Film Society
Wednesday, 30 August, 6.30pm
 
Wellington Film Society
Tuesday, 3 October, 6.15pm
 
Carterton Film Society
Friday, 3 November, 8.00pm
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