What inner calling or vision led you to create Eskawata?

Coming to the rainforest was, above all, a return to our roots. Both directors, Lara Jacoski and Patrick Belem, are Brazilian and co-founders of Bem-te-vi Produções named after the bird whose name in Portuguese means “Good to see you.” By 2017, when we began filming *Eskawata*, we had already been traveling together for over five years. Our journey has taken us through Thailand, India, Bolivia, Cambodia, the UK, and Morocco always to learn from different realities and serve as a bridge between non-mainstream narratives and broader audiences.

Wherever we went, we carried our cameras, working alongside traditional communities that live in connection with the Earth. Our approach was always to offer our tools in service of their stories, to amplify their messages with care. Coming to learn from our Indigenous peoples — Brazil’s First Nations felt like a natural and necessary step. And as with all the meaningful encounters we’ve had, this one unfolded organically: we set the intention, and the path revealed itself.

It was Patrick who first visited the Huni Kuin. After many years walking a spiritual path and sitting in ceremonies, a powerful call came during an ayahuasca ritual led by Siã Huni Kuin. That call led him to the village of Novo Futuro and, as always, he brought a camera, not as an observer, but as an offering. Over 15 days, he was welcomed by many spiritual leaders who felt ready to speak. He returned with over 10 hours of powerful interviews.

When we sat together to watch the footage, we immediately recognized its preciousness. This was the first time the Huni Kuin had chosen to share their story, their cosmology, and their vision on camera for a Western audience and we understood that this was no longer just a project, but a responsibility.

We are now entering the eighth year of the project. The first three years were dedicated to production, with multiple trips to the Humaitá Indigenous Land, where most of the film takes place, and to the Upper Jordão region. We also hosted the Huni Kuin in our own home and traveled together on many occasions. Alongside this, we deepened our contact with other Indigenous peoples in Brazil including the Xavante, Kuikuro, Karajá, and Guarani exploring the many histories that predate Brazil itself.

The next three years were focused on post-production. The pandemic disrupted many things, but for us, it brought a welcome stillness. We lived close to nature, and the editing process became an extension of the same rhythm we had learned from the forest and the Huni Kuin. That spirit is alive in the film.

By the sixth year, we began distributing independently. We premiered *Eskawata* at MAPS 2023 the world’s largest psychedelic science conference, held in Denver. What followed was a four-month tour across 37 cities in Europe and the United States, with over 45 screenings in cinemas, theaters, universities, and farms. Back in Brazil, we’ve held 10 screenings in Indigenous territories and over 150 screenings worldwide, both online and in-person.

Today, the film has been selected by 38 festivals in 18 countries and has received 13 awards. As we approach the end of 2025, our eighth year, our goal is to make the film available for streaming, continuing to share this collective story of memory, resistance, and transformation.

How did you build trust with the tribe and receive permission to witness their sacred world?

Eskawatã Kayawai was born mainly from our relationship with the community. It’s important to say that this work didn’t come from a desire or need to create something, but rather from a deeper intention as Brazilians to live and experience these roots. It just happened to be the perfect moment, we got to their village when the Huni Kuin people were ready to share their culture and identity after many years of oppression. 

What spiritual responsibilities did you feel while telling their story?

As creators, it has always been essential for us to remain conscious of the historical role of the oppressors and the persistence of a colonial, extractivist mindset. We believe that what truly opened the doors for this project was an attitude of openness and relationality as a way of being that aligns with the forest itself, which reveals its mysteries only when approached with respect and understanding. This teaching that wanting and needing can often echo colonial patterns reminds us that creation must not come from a place of extraction, but from genuine connection.

How did the tribe’s way of being challenge or awaken parts of your spiritual path?

When we create based on urgency, ambition, or ego, we risk producing things that may make sense to the creator but hold no meaning for the community involved. Sadly, these kinds of dislocated creations happen often, even inside the forest. 

For us, it was crucial to commit to responsibility at every step: sharing time, producing, editing, and finalizing the film always with the guidance and collaboration of the community. The entire process involved the participation of community leader and co-producer Ninawá Pai da Mata, the communal assemblies of all villages in the Humaitá Indigenous Territory, the Huni Kuin Federation (FEPHAC), and the Brazilian Indigenous agency (FUNAI). 
Together with Vinicius Romão, who works locally in Acre for years, and have opened the doors to us to first arrive.

What emerged over seven years was not just a film, but a process of learning and transformation a lived experience that portrays the cultural revival of a people, through their own narrative. We interviewed around 30 Indigenous individuals, capturing the reality of their cultural resurgence. Interwoven with their voices is the rich imagery of the forest and their way of life. We are guided into the depths of the forest, into the beauty and simplicity of daily life, the enchantment of sacred medicines, and the collective effort to rediscover ourselves in communion with nature. 

Did you feel guided by spirit, dreams, or intuition toward this story?

The film’s approach, as we said from the beginning, was rooted in genuine interaction a commitment to accompany and support their projects with intimacy and respect. Long before any recording took place, we dedicated time to cohabiting with the community, participating in shared rituals, singing together, exchanging songs, and absorbing the essence of life in its purest form. This is what gave the film its soul. The audience feels it not only through comprehension or technique, but through presence a beautiful and sensitive, yet powerful, contact with reality. This powerful return to origin is, we believe, an example for the world especially in these critical times showing that it is still possible to rescue ancestral values, and to live in harmony with ourselves, with others, and with the planet.

What does “Eskawata” mean to you on a spiritual or energetic level?

Eskawatã means transformation, from our comprehension, transformation is a central aspect within the Huni Kuin culture and also within the work with ayahuasca. The documentary carries this transformation, this hope of a better culture, more aligned with nature, with the natural cycles and aspects of human life, the transformation into something more aligned with the balance needed for real harmony to take place within our relationship with the planet. 

How did your presence as a filmmaker transform when entering a space of ceremony and ancestral wisdom?

Being human beyond being a filmmaker, an anthropologist, or any role we carry is what truly allows us to enter these spaces. Everything is about relationships, how living beings relate to other living beings. So, stepping out of fixed positions and into the experience of life in community creates the conditions to live a different culture, one that carries its own cosmologies. When entering a space of ritual, ceremony, and the sharing of ancestral wisdom, it’s essential to come with deep respect for ancient oral traditions that have resisted time, distortion, and misunderstanding. It’s also important to be open and ready to let go of the labels, beliefs, and identities we carry, so we can truly see what is present, and be available to learn. This requires the courage to touch our own vulnerability and to meet others as equals as human beings who make mistakes, who cry and laugh, who are learning and teaching all at once. We are all, in the end, in the process of becoming better human beings.

In what ways did the shamanic practices open your awareness or shift your  consciousness, Can you describe the energy of the ceremonies what was felt beyond what was seen?

Patrick: This journey marked a profound revolution in my life, not just internally, in my own healing and transformation, but also in affirming something I had long sensed: that the invisible side of creation is real. That there is a greater intelligence a living mystery orchestrating the patterns and possibilities of this existence. Working with sacred plants like ayahuasca showed me, not as a belief, but as a direct experience, that reality is multilayered, and that these plants are not just tools but spiritual intelligences in themselves.

Their power is immense, it transcends dualities like good and bad. And because of that, they must be approached with humility and deep respect. These aren’t shortcuts. They aren’t trends. They are living technologies guarded and developed by ancestral peoples over generations. To engage with them without recognizing the guardianship and traditions they come from can be dangerous.

We also need to be vigilant with ourselves. Because if we’re not careful, even these sacred spaces can become arenas for the same old ego patterns or just another industry, another business. Performance, superiority, avoidance, playing the same games we do in daily life, just wearing different clothes. No ceremony, no medicine will do the real work for us. They can open doors, but walking through, transforming, integrating, living in coherence, that happens on this side of the veil.

So for me, this work is not about escaping reality. It’s about remembering how sacred this life already is. It’s about doing the work of being human with integrity, with reverence, and in a deep relationship with the Earth and this life. 

Lara: There is a significant shift in consciousness in the first place, by entering the Amazon rainforest. By entering the forest, you are already hit by a massive wave of life. Life is in the form of a gigantic forest that sings so loudly because of its aliveness. This physical encounter already brings another dimension, changing the understanding of the proportions of size and power of life. Then, the experiences of living in a community bring all sorts of teachings, re-evaluating what we understand as comfort, technology, science, and education. And so much more. So when you encounter their sacred medicine, the living being ayahuasca, it is another step even deeper into consciousness that keeps inviting us to go beyond our comfort zone, completely changing the way we interact with life. That's why it's said that it takes a community to hold a medicine. So I don't believe at all that it's about the medicine ayahuasca when there's all this life that surrounds it, inside and out. We should cultivate a plant medicine consciousness if we are not open to minor changes and subtle life inputs, as the sun sparkles, so step into the humid soil… We have to be coherent if the subject is about consciousness.

Lara: The first time I started to understand the concept of time, I remember wanting to realize the idea in my head and follow through with the planning made for those precious days in the forest. But it seemed that every time, when trying to arrange an interview in the village, when asked “what time?” It was like decreeing the loss of that interview. It was through time that I learned to appreciate it. In my experiences with other cultures, I learned to remember to leave my suitcase full of baggage at home before going to meet others, which limits seeing, listening, and understanding beyond knowledge itself. Back in the village, the moment I realized and threw away my filming planning and opened myself up to being present and open to whatever presented itself, the magic began to manifest itself, the film I was developing took shape and shone. 

We were taught to see and live in a reality where everything is planned, assumed and preceded. From life in the woods and reconnecting with natural knowledge, every day I discover some concept to address, which does not belong to my nature. Gradually, I open up more spaces inside myself to be able to listen, feel, perceive with all my senses, organs, and little parts of the body, in addition to the mind. 

Every reading of the signs that make up the earth-sky wisdom, at some point, ceased to be experienced by the great mass, as if it were an ancient language that had ceased to be practiced by the majority. However, this is the master language that, even without speaking, we all carry, the language that makes no distinction of race or borders, our universal language. The most incredible thing is that remembering is so simple, all kinds of forgotten knowledge on the planet, whether from our recent ancestors, from seven years or millennia, is hanging in the air. Recovering something is not difficult, and this is seen in the history of our original peoples, such as the Huni Kuin from Eskawata Kayawai, prohibited from practicing their culture since the invasion of the declared land of Brazil, and, after a long time, recovering and practicing the wisdom of their ancestors. 

You have to make yourself available, be open, be empty, without being busy or worried all the time. We are used to living so preoccupied, we worry and are busy with our education, always taking courses, constantly studying, and working more to pay for studies... We are, in a way, thirsty for information, thirsty to discover ourselves, to place ourselves in the world based on our actions, sometimes choosing the bias of rationally understanding our history, where we came from, and where we are going. In all these headquarters, we ultimately set aside our primary training: living human beings on planet Earth. This is the condition we find ourselves in - having one or several lives, being an evolving spirit or an earthly manifestation - the school here is that of the earth, and the more integrated we are with it, the more it opens the secrets to the world, which then takes us to the heavens, where we expand into our knowledge of the universe and its wisdom of far more than 200 billion stars.

How do the rituals portrayed in Eskawata speak to healing, not just for the tribe, but for humanity and the Earth and what message do you feel the spirits of the forest and the ancestors are trying to communicate through this film?

This film captures the essence of a specific region while, in different ways, resonating with the broader reality faced by Indigenous communities across Brazil. The Huni Kuin have endured profound and lasting challenges since the arrival of colonizers, facing restrictions on their way of life, language, and connection to the land and its sustenance. After generations of cultural suppression and subjugation, they underwent a powerful spiritual awakening, reconnecting with their ancestry and reclaiming their cultural identity. This resurgence marked a turning point, ushering in a new era centered on Indigenous rights, cultural revival, and spiritual strength. Today, the Huni Kuin embody a way of life rooted in deep harmony with nature, sharing their ancestral wisdom a worldview grounded in the land and lineage that not only brings individual healing but offers medicine for the world. By documenting this living, oral tradition through film, we aim to transmit a message of hope and clarity: the story of a people who, in just two decades of collective effort, found their center and revived their essence. Their journey stands as a beacon not only for other Indigenous peoples reclaiming their lands and traditions, but for all of society. It serves as a reminder that healing is possible when we reconnect with our roots, with one another, and with the Earth.

Photo credits: Gary Wyk & Lucia Alonso