Sachamama
2010 · 41m · Documentary
Sachamama is a retreat lodge in Peruvian Amazonia. There, Francisco Montes leads ayahuasca ceremonies for tourists seeking insight and healing.
More Like This
Up the Yangtze
2008 · ★ 7.3
At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.
More info →
Amazon: Land of the Flooded Forest
1990 · ★ 7.2
Explore an extraordinary region where water and land life intermingle six months out of the year.
More info →
The Invention of the Other
2022 · ★ 8
In 2019, the Brazilian government coordinates the largest and riskiest expedition of the last decades into the Amazon rainforest to search for a group of isolated indigenous people in vulnerability and promote their first contact with non-indigenous. Bruno Pereira, who would later be murdered in the same region and turned into an international symbol in favor of the indigenous and the forest, leads the expedition.
More info →Woven Songs of the Amazon
2007 · ★ 7
The Shipibo-Konibo people of Peruvian Amazon decorate their pottery, jewelry, textiles, and body art with complex geometric patterns called kené. These patterns also have corresponding songs, called icaros, which are integral to the Shipibo way of life. This documentary explores these unique art forms, and one Shipibo family's efforts to safeguard the tradition.
More info →
Le Mystère des rivières volantes d'Amazonie
2022 · ★ 8.5
Discovered about twenty years ago, the immense masses of water vapor that fly over the Amazon, called "flying rivers", fascinate researchers. Their future could be intimately linked to climate change.
More info →
Yo hablo a Caracas
1978
Yo hablo a Caracas (1978), the first documentary by Carlos Azpúrua, is marked by the luminous presence of the Yekuana shaman Barné Yavarí. This elder from the Amazonian forest articulates two powerful and prophetic warnings: first, a demand for respect toward the sovereignty of Indigenous beliefs and culture; second, a grave denunciation of the threat posed by “criollo” presence and its economically irrational logic to the natural balance of the Amazon. Through Yavarí’s voice, the film contrasts modern exploitation with a millennia-old Indigenous worldview grounded in harmony with nature, turning the documentary into an early and resonant plea for cultural dignity and ecological consciousness.
More info →
Ajishama, The White Ibis
2003
Shot in Venezuela over a 30-year period, this documentary depicts the life and work of José Maria Korta, the controversial Jesuit Missionary with the Ye'kwana people of the Amazon.
More info →
Metamorphosis
2009
Hamilton Souther is the founder of Blue Morpho Tours, a company that caters to ayahuasca tourists in the Peruvian Amazon. Souther talks about the events that led him to Amazonian shamanism. Five first-time ayahuasca drinkers on a nine-day retreat with Blue Morpho relate their experiences.
More info →
The Shaman & Ayahuasca: Journeys to Sacred Realms
2010 · ★ 4
Filmed in the jungles of Peru, shaman Don Jose Campos introduces the practices and benefits of Ayahuasca, the psychoactive plant brew that has been used for healing and visionary journeys by Amazonian shamans for at least a thousand years.
More info →
Big River Man
2009 · ★ 6.6
Follows Martin Strel as he attempts to cover 3,375 miles of the Amazon River in what is being billed as the world's longest swim.
More info →