Narrativas de resistência: decolonialidade em O Abraço da Serpente, de Ciro Guerra

Abstract

This research analyses the discursive dimensions present in Embrace of the Serpent (2015), a fictional film directed by the Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra, through the lens of decoloniality and materialist discourse analysis. It starts from the understanding that cinema, as a cultural and political artefact, can both reproduce and challenge regimes of visuality shaped by the coloniality of power. In this sense, the film offers a productive field for examining Amazonian Indigenous resistance, the displacement of the Eurocentric gaze, and the emergence of other ways of knowing, feeling and narrating the world. Methodologically, the dissertation combines bibliographical review, film analysis, discourse analysis and narrative analysis. Its theoretical path draws on categories related to decoloniality, the coloniality of power, discourse analysis and film criticism, with particular attention to the aesthetic materiality of the work, its temporal structure, characters, points of view and the silences that shape the diegesis. The findings indicate that Embrace of the Serpent works as a critique of colonial imaginaries by exposing the violence of the civilising ideal, questioning the exoticising gaze traditionally directed at Indigenous peoples, and constructing, through monochrome photography, brief irruptions of colour, contemplative shots and the centrality of the river, a visuality that resists the Western logic of control. At the same time, the analysis identifies a significant contradiction: the near absence of Indigenous female characters, interpreted in light of María Lugones’s concept of the coloniality of gender as an expression of the erasure of Amazonian women. This tension becomes even more complex in view of the allegations of sexual harassment involving the director and eight Indigenous women, which reveal the limits of a decolonial discourse when it is not translated into ethical practice in gender relations and artistic production. The dissertation concludes that decoloniality cannot be restricted to aesthetics or narrative, since it also demands an ethical and relational stance. The research contributes to studies on Latin American cinema, Indigenous feminist criticism, decoloniality and the materialist analysis of audiovisual discourse by arguing that film interpretation must also consider the political and ethical conditions under which a work is produced.