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.

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.

So "Embrace Of The Serpent" is told from the points of view and in the languages of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. He [Guerra] went there before shooting began, with a script written mostly in Spanish.

And what they believe in real life is complicated. Theodor Koch-Grunberg wrote in his diary that indigenous peoples in the Amazon see these outsiders following in each other's footsteps as the same person, a single soul traversing across several lives. They also see time as something that doesn't proceed inexorably into the future.

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.

The Ocaina and many of the other indigenous peoples of the Amazon were nearly wiped out during the rubber boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Outsiders came into the jungle, enslaved the tribes to harvest the rubber and killed those that resisted.

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."