At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in this Oscar®-nominated ethnographic odyssey through the heart of the Amazon.

Shot in mesmerising monochrome, it centres on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his tribe, and he leads two European explorers (one in 1909 and the other in the 1940s - the story is based on real-life journals) who are both searching for a sacred and elusive plant. Director Guerra reverses the usual hackneyed focus from white saviour and a noble 'savage' so that their journeys are seen through Karamakate's eyes instead - and it's a welcome change.

Full of visual flair, haunting mysticism and an unstoppable moral conviction, Embrace of the Serpent is by turns astonishing and terrifyingly ferocious; both a hypnotically beautiful ode to life in the Amazon and an unequivocally searing critique of the harrowing effects of colonialism. You'll be thinking about it for days after.

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