Based on true events, Serpent splices together two parallel timelines, each featuring Karamakate, shaman and lone survivor of his tribe. In his younger iteration, circa 1909, the defiant Karamakate (Nilbio Torres) reluctantly aids ailing German scientist Theodor Koch-Grunberg (Jan Bijvoet) in his quest for a sacred healing plant called yakruna. More than 30 years later, another scientist, Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis), an American, follows Koch-Grunberg's footsteps back to an older Karamakate (Antonio Bolivar), again in search of yakruna. Though symbolically central to the film's climax, Serpent is less about this plant than the dual journeys in search of it, through which we encounter both the immediate and long-term effects of colonial intervention. by Marjorie Skinner