Antidote 15

*On the 8th of April, the screening will be followed by a Q&A discussion with Marc Silver. Marc is a filmmaker and story consultant who, over the last two decades, has created a body of work that probes the systems of power that shape our world. His first feature length film ‘Who is Dayani Cristal?’ premiered at the Sundance Festival 2013 where it won the Cinematography Award: World Cinema Documentary and the Amnesty International Best Documentary Award 2014. His Oscar shortlisted and Emmy nominated film ‘3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets’ premiered at the Sundance Festival 2015 winning the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact.*

Antidote focuses on a family of Indigenous shamans and their ancestral relationship to the Amazon rainforest, its spirit world, and its curing traditions.

A group of Westerners arrive looking for healing from a variety of traumas, and the shamans welcome them.

Using song, ceremony and Ayahuasca, the most potent and transformative medicine of the Amazon, they begin their work. The shamans reveal how Ayahuasca both cures and guides the mind, but warn against a self centred approach to healing.

Amazonian cultures have suffered at the hands of Western ideologies, individualism and extractive industries, and the film explores whether the commodification of this sacred plant is a new type of exploitation: spiritual extractivism.

The Westerners learn that Ayahuasca is medicine not just for individuals but one that is used to heal history and the imagination, and humanity's broken relationship with nature itself.