Now is their chance. "Embrace of the Serpent" opens Friday for a week at the Landmark E Street Cinema, followed by a week at the Bethesda Row Cinema.

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Never mind that the film didn't end up winning the Oscar — the golden statue went to "Son of Saul." This is the first Colombian film ever to be nominated, which compatriots consider a victory in itself. More than that, they are embracing "Serpent" as a sign that not just Colombian cinema, but Colombia itself has emerged from desperate decades to the point where art and commerce can be peacefully pursued on a grand scale again.

"This is a very special moment for Colombia that is reflected in this film," said Colombian Ambassador Juan Carlos Pinzón before a separate private screening at the Motion Picture Association of America in Washington. "As you know, Colombia was having difficult times for a long time. Things have changed in a positive way….At the same time, things are happening in the movie market."

Drug violence and guerrilla war in the 1980s and 1990s squelched the national film industry and made Hollywood leery of filming productions there. "The Mission" (1986) with Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons was one of the last big Hollywood projects filmed partly in Colombia.

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Now after years of relative peace, cameras are rolling. Most recently, "The 33" (2015) with Antonio Banderas and Juliette Binoche, telling the story of the trapped Chilean miners, was filmed partly in Colombia. Colombia's domestic cinema is bouncing back, too, from generating just a handful of premieres a few years ago to around 30 per year now. Colombian audiences are seeking out made-in-Colombia works once again, confident that imports aren't the only source of quality.

"The industry that once existed in the '80s was crushed because of the violence," said Gonzalo Córdoba, president of Caracol Television in Bogotá, which helped finance "Embrace of the Serpent" and produces a number of films every year. "Now the industry is revamping."

Much of the new work is light, popular fare, narco-dramas and so forth. Not that there's anything wrong with that. At least the drug wars provided grist for filmmakers.

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There are also increasing examples of bold, artistically ambitious pieces — such as "Embrace of the Serpent."

In choosing to make his third feature film out of a story set in the Colombian Amazon, director Ciro Guerra entered a world that Colombians themselves don't know much about. He posted a statement about his inspiration on the film's Facebook page rendered here in an approximate translation:

Whenever I looked at the map of my country I saw a great unknown. Nearly half was covered by a hidden territory, a green cloak about which I knew nothing. It's the Amazon, a vast land that we have reduced to a few notions: Coca, drugs, rivers, Indians, war. Is there really nothing more there? Isn't there a culture, a history? A transcendent spirit? The explorers taught me that the answer is yes.

Guerra started with the diaries of two explorers who trekked and paddled through this secret land on journeys that took place more than 40 years apart, in the first half of the 20th century — the German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg and the American ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes. But unlike previous films of journeys into the heart of the unknown — think "Fitzcarraldo" or even "Apocalypse Now" — Guerra did not want to favor the perceptions of the explorers or visitors.

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"History is always told from the point of view of the explorers, even the history of our country," the film's producer Cristina Gallego said in an interview. "The thing we wanted to do with the film was completely change the approach and the point of view, and develop the film from the indigenous point of view."

Guerra and co-writer Jacques Toulemonde created the character of Karamakate, a shaman, the last survivor of his people, who meets the white explorers loosely based on the real ones during their respective explorations, separated by decades. The fictional explorers are seeking the same rare and sacred plant that has healing and psychedelic powers. The film braids the two encounters together as the young Karamakate accompanies the European and the old Karamakate travels with the American. In old age, the shaman has forgotten some of his sacred knowledge and memories, and his quest involves recovering his past and seeking a way to pass it on so that it will survive.

The film was shot in the Vaupés section of southeastern Colombia, on a tributary of the Amazon River. The river there is not navigable, which has saved some of the indigenous tribes of the region from too much intrusion, Gallego said. Hoping not to repeat the mistakes of those who have entered the Amazon only to exploit it — including the rubber barons, missionaries and soldiers depicted in the film — the filmmakers sought permission from the local villagers and enlisted them as collaborators in the project, inviting them to infuse the narrative with their worldview and values.

Part of Gallego's responsibility was to amass supplies to be prepared for anything from torrential rain to snakebites and fevers. Just in case, she and her colleagues welcomed the initiative of a shaman who ceremonially invoked the higher powers of the forest to bless the filming. After that, everything went well.

Part of what's disappearing from the Amazon is language itself. As a kind of permanent record, the film's dialogue, with English subtitles, is delivered in five indigenous languages, plus Spanish, German, Portuguese and Catalan. First-time actor Nilbio Torres of the Cubeo people portrays the young Karamakate. Another novice from the villages, Tafillama (also called Antonio Bolívar) plays the old Karamakate. Tafillama is part Ocaina and Uitoto, and is one of the last of his people.

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In preparation for his role as the young shaman, Torres was sent to Bogotá for a week of acting classes. It was his first plane ride, his first trip to the city.

"I was really afraid because in my community one hears that in Bogotá there are a lot of bandits who kill people," Torres said in an interview distributed by the filmmakers. "But then I realized, no, it's great."

Just as Karamakate in the film wants to safeguard his memories and knowledge, the making of the film accomplished something similar for indigenous peoples whose traditions are fading fast under pressure from non-indigenous society, Torres said.