Embrace of the Serpent

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A river cruise is like a movie. The boat glides from scene to scene, the travelers get to know each other, and around the final curve awaits resolution, or perhaps revelation.

Or at least that's how the voyage proceeds in Colombian director and co-writer Ciro Guerra's fascinating The Embrace of the Serpent. Nominated for the best foreign-language-film Oscar, the Amazon-set drama is a trip in more ways than one. It intertwines two journeys of discovery, inspired by the real-life journals of German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg and American ethno-botanist Richard Evans Schultes.

- npr.org