Embrace of the Serpent centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last surviving member of his people, who assists two scientists, forty years apart, as they navigate the Colombian Amazon in search of the rare yakruna plant. The silky 35mm black-and-white cinematography lends the images—filmed over seven weeks with the cooperation of Indigenous communities in the jungles of Vaupés—a timeless quality. The film evokes the deep, ongoing consequences of colonialism, the fragility of Indigenous cultural knowledge, and the complex relationships between Western science, spirituality, and the natural world.