Ciro GUERRA

Born 1981 in Rio de Oro, Colombia
Based in Bogotá, Colombia

After studying Film and Television at the National University of Colombia, produced his first feature film, Wandering Shadows (2004), which went on to win awards at film festivals around the world, including the San Sebastián International Film Festival. His second feature film, The Wind Journeys (2009), which tells the story of a vallenato folk musician who embarks on a journey through the Caribbean region in northern Columbia, competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Award of the City of Rome.

His third feature film, Embrace of the Serpent, is set in the Amazon, which Guerra describes as “the most beautiful, unknown world in Colombia.” Based on the diaries of two white explores who journeyed into the Amazon in the early twentieth century, it relates the memories of Karamakate, a shaman and the last survivor of his tribe, as the memories of the Amazon itself. The result is an epic tale in which the elderly Karamakate’s memories, which come back to him when he meets a botanist and journeys once more into the heart of the Amazon in a canoe, and the mystical world of the Amazon become entwined. The film was the first Colombian film to be nominated for an Academy Award.