A win for Colombia's 'Embrace of the Serpent'

The Colombian film “Embrace of the Serpent” by director Ciro Guerra has won an award for highlighting science in film at Sundance 2016. The black-and-white Amazonian drama received the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize from the Sundance Institute Science-in-Film Initiative. Supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the initiative supports film projects about science and technology or featuring scientists, engineers and mathematicians in major roles. The award comes with a cash prize of $20,000.

“Embrace of the Serpent” is inspired by the original journals of scientists Theodor Koch-Grünberg from Germany and Richard Evans Schultes from the U.S., who meet lone survivor Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman. Over 40 years, they develop a friendship while traveling through the Colombian Amazon in search of the sacred, psychedelic yakruna plant. The film stars Jan Bijvoet, Brionne Davis, Antonio Bolivar, Nilbio Torres, and Miguel Dionisio Ramos. The film is playing at Sundance in Spotlight, a section showcasing the fest programmers’ favorite films that have been playing around the world. OSCAR NOMINEE A multilingual work with Spanish, Portuguese, German, Latin and Catalan, the Colombian film is an Oscar contender for foreign language film this year. It has also won about ten awards from international film festivals. “This beautiful film depicts the scientist as unconventional explorer and an encounter between two cultures that leads to a deeper understanding of nature and new scientific knowledge, research which continues to this day,” said Doron Weber, vice president of programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “In a year with such fine Oscar-nominated films as “The Martian,” “Steve Jobs” and “Joy,” “Embrace of the Serpent” shows how the boldest and most gifted filmmakers continue to find innovative ways of telling stories with scientific themes and characters.”

OTHER PAST LATINO WINNERS Films previously supported by the Sundance Institute Science-in-Film Initiative include two directed by Latinos, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Kyle Patrick Alvarez and “Sleep Dealer” by Alex Rivera. Other past winners are: “I Origins,” “Computer Chess,” “Robot & Frank,” “Valley of Saints,” “Another Earth,” “Obselidia,” ”Adam,” “Dark Matter,” “House of Sand,” “Grizzly Man,” “Primer” and “Dopamine.” –CESAR ARREDONDO