The two explorers are given fictional names. But as in real life, they travel to the Amazon roughly a generation apart, in the early-to-mid 20th century. In the film, they're both guided by Karamakate, as a young man early in the story and later as an old shaman. He and the outsiders share a desire for knowledge - self knowledge and an understanding of the world around them, says the film's co-screenwriter, Jacques Toulemonde.

Karamakate says, "to become a warrior, every Cohiuano man must leave everything behind and go into the jungle, guided only by his dreams. In that journey, he has to discover, in solitude and silence, who he really is."

The loss of the culture is one of the main reasons Ciro Guerra wanted to tell their story.

If you think we are going to gain ground by holding the American people hostage, saying that their taxes are at risk, I actually disagree.

The National Football league is on the wrong side of history.

In fact, Guerra based his story on the diaries of two explorers, German Theodor Koch-Grunberg and American Richard Evans Schultes. There work is some of the only documentation of cultures that have since vanished. But Guerra did not want white men to be his protagonists.

I would like to say that what Mel Phillips was doing was not sexual harassment but more sexual abuse of children, because he was doing it in a sexual manner now that I look back on it.