An enigmatic presence haunts the depths of the Amazon rainforest, where an indigenous Achuar teenager has disappeared. During the search for the young man, his family decides to consult with a Shaman, who, immersed in trance, reveals that the young man was taken by the devil, but that he has intervened by showing him the way back to his home. While waiting for his return, secrets of the rainforest and Amazonian visions of life after death are touched, vanishing the documentary filmmaker’s concepts of reality.
On the border of Surinam and French Guyana, indigenous Wayana territory is overrun by intruders. Illegal gold miners poison the river, missionaries repress indigenous identity, and even doctors with the best intentions leave marks that are often silently violent. The Wayana call these intruders Parasisi.
A botanical expedition in Ecuador's Amazon becomes a medium for an indigenous Huaorani community to remember the genocidal colonization it suffered in the 1960s. Meanwhile, a group of ecologists from the capital tries to stop oil exploitation in the last remaining forests where the isolated Huaoranis still live, who to this day refuse to come into contact with civilization.
Faire des vagues
One peaceful day for the farmers in the summer of 2009, the Korean government announced the master plan for the “4 Major Rivers Project.” The government suddenly announced that organic agriculture severly polluted the water. The 4 Major Rivers Project was a mega-sized national project by the LEE Myungbaek Administration to “renovate” the 4 major rivers in Korea to construct the Korean Peninsula Great Canal. The project constructs 16 dams in the rivers and expropriates farming lands and riverbeds to build bicycle roads and parks. The Paldang “Dumulmeori” organic farming area known as the hub of Korean organic farming was to be included as part of the 4 Rivers Project. This film is about the 40 Months of struggles by organic farmers against the 4 Major Rivers Project.
Back from war in Afghanistan, a young British soldier struggling with depression and PTSD finds a second chance in the Amazon rainforest when he meets an American scientist, and together they foster an orphaned baby ocelot.
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.
Faced with the advancement of eucalyptus plantations, a farmer and an indigenous community stand as resistance and reveal the impact of monoculture on the environment, in contrast to traditional ways of life. The enemy can also be green.
Documentary about the degraded rivers of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Sachamama is a retreat lodge in Peruvian Amazonia. There, Francisco Montes leads ayahuasca ceremonies for tourists seeking insight and healing.
The challenges to keep the forest standing
Explore an extraordinary region where water and land life intermingle six months out of the year.
Keď zima k riekam prichádzav
Until the 1950s, the Waorani were able to successfully defended their area of settlement – today’s Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon – with the aid of spears. Then Christian missionaries entered the thick rain forest and paved the way for an oil company. Nowadays many of the tribes are estranged as some want to benefit from the short-term money the company is offering while others fight to preserve their land, culture and independence under all circumstances.
Ruta madre
The last two surviving members of the Piripkura people, a nomadic tribe in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, struggle to maintain their indigenous way of life amidst the region's massive deforestation. Living deep in the rainforest, Pakyî and Tamandua live off the land relying on a machete, an ax, and a torch lit in 1998.
Aya: Awakenings' is an experiential journey by journalist Rak Razam into the world and visions of ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic plant medicine from the Amazon, capturing the experience and the western dynamic around it in unprecedented detail.
Legendary kayaker Scott Lindgren attempts to complete an extreme, unprecedented whitewater expedition 20-years-in-the-making. When a brain tumor derails his goals, he sinks into the darkness of his own trauma only to discover that healing, like any expedition, is not a destination but a journey.
ATUEL is the story of a community and its river; of a river and its community. Everyone in the province of Mendoza, Argentina, lives in one of three oases. The southern oasis, home to the cities of San Rafael and General Alvear, depends primarily on The Atuel River. Yet incredulously, the river remains under threat. People cannot care for what they don’t know and so we decided to ask the river what story it would like to tell about itself. To do so, we travelled its entire length from its source in the heart of The Andes to where it dries out prematurely in the sands of The Cuyo Desert. We’re told we are the first to do so since 1884 and the first ever to do so by boat. 43 days. 480 kilometres. 38 people interviewed about their relationship with the river.
A black and white film about the people who live near one of the world’s largest hydroelectric plants in Amazonia. In the shadow of this environmentally destructive project, they eke out involuntarily meagre lives, without electricity or infrastructure.