ICAROS: A VISION
Icaros: A Vision
Leonor Carabello & Matteo Norzi, 2017
Catalog No.: FTF-070
Length: 91 minutes
Looking for a miracle, Angelina lands at a healing center in the Peruvian Amazon where shamans minister to a group of foreign psychonauts seeking transcendence, companionship, and the secrets of life and death. Her perceptions altered by the ancient psychedelic plant known as ayahuasca, she bonds with Arturo, a young indigenous shaman who is losing his eyesight. In their hallucinogenic journeys together they attain a different sense of their destinies. She learns to accept her fears while Arturo, in turn, realizes that he will be able to see in the dark and sing his ceremonial healing songs, the icaros.
Filmmakers Leonor Caraballo and Matteo Norzi have deftly handled this drama by drawing from their own experiences, allowing for a uniquely stirring film that touches on the notions of friendship, familial bonds, and the fear of the unknown. Visually inventive and hypnotic in nature, Icaros: A Vision captivates with its meditative look at a little-seen world, punctuated by truly trippy depictions of ceremonial splendor.
Cast: Ana Cecilia Stieglitz, Arturo Izquierdo, Filippo Timi
Directed by Leonor Caraballo, Matteo Norzi
Written by Leonor Caraballo, Matteo Norzi, Abou Farman
Produced by Abou Farman, Matteo Norzi and Aziz Isham
Co-Produced by Adella Ladjevardi
Edited by Èlia Gasull Balada
Cinematography by Ghasem Ebrahimian
Sound by Tom Paul
Festivals: Festivals: Tribeca Film Festival, Festival Internacional Del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de La Habana, Warsaw Film Festival, Mill Valley Film Festival, Göteborg Film Festival, World Ayahuasca Film Festival, Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara and more…
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PRESS
"Mesmerizing...You’ll come out of it with your head spinning, in a good way." Critics Pick.
- Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times
"A rich and satisfying sensory experience."
- John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter
"Throughout, the filmmakers forge a distinctive tonality of lost, aching, and exultant sadness...Suggests nothing less than another dimension."
- Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine
“Never less than transfixing. A literal and psychological Heart of Darkness.”
- Nick Shager, Variety
"The hallucinatory power of ayahuasca and the incantatory lure of rituals fuse with existential dread in this darkly hypnotic drama....The directors, capture the induced hallucinations with a visual imagination of rare specificity and fury, in which pop-culture memories and exotic natural splendors converge with personal troubles and metaphysical transformations."
- Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“A strong and strange new film that combines the unknown with the very relatable search to actually know anything.”
- Kate Erbland, IndieWire
“A very personal film made with a meditative and observant resolve.”
- Steve Dollar, The Wall Street Journal