Sebastian*e, a queer artist, penetrates herself with a cob in a transgenic cornfield, unaware that death is near. Her sister Ana, a punk girl from the city, follows her steps carrying her ashes through the Amazon on a quest that will become a spiritual and sexually liberating experience. Her path is filled with intriguing encounters and challenges while her sister appears to her along the way amid inescapable stories of colonialism, modernization, and the current political situation of Brazil and Latin America. Ana ends up being possessed by the journey: she does not access ayahuasca, ayahuasca accesses her; she does not cross the border, the border crosses her. A lesbian orgy culminates in the connection with ancestral pleasure while medicinal plants of the forest open the door for the underworld to manifest itself in performative visions of Sebastian*e. This queer-punk road movie flows as freely between performance art, political comment, and fictional filmmaking as the bodies and identities of its characters in a tropical ambiance that sets the stage for game playing, protests, and metamorphoses.

Shamans in the Amazon, queer orgies, jaguars: a film as a poetic counterpoint against fascism.
Missy Magazine / ‘The Whisper of the Jaguar’ defies the Brazil of far-right President Bolsonaro / 31.10.2018

Selection of Festivals, Exhibitions & Awards

Documenta14 2017, World Premiere
Cartagena International Film Festival – FICCI 2018, Winner Best Director Award – Colombian Competition
Ciclo Rosa LGBT Film Festival 2018, Opening Film
Fénix Ibero-American Awards 2018 (Pre-selection)
MIX Brasil LGBT Film Festival 2018, Distribution Award for Brazilian theatrical release
AMOR Festival internacional de Cine LGBT+ 2018, Chilean Premiere
Fringe! Queer Film and Arts Fest 2018, UK Premiere
International Queer & Migrant Film Festival 2018, Dutch Premiere
Festival Cuirpoétikas, Ciudad de Guatemala 2018, Guatemalan Premiere
Fargo Moorhead LGBT Film Festival 2018, Best Film Award
Cabiria Festival 2019, Official Selection
Kuir Bogotá – Queer Film Festival 2019, Retrospective Simon(e) J. Paetau
ZINEGOAK – Bilbao’s International GayLesboTrans Film and Performing Arts Festival 2019, Spanish Premiere
Peruvian Film Festival Made by Women 2019, Peruvian Premiere
Festival Internacional de Cine Colombiano en Buenos Aires – FICCBA 2020
Stadtkino Basel – Amazonas Movie Series 2021
FICAMAZONÍA Mocoa y Florencia 2021
FICUNAM – Festival Internacional de Cine UNAM 2023, Official Selection
Eureka Festival Universitario de Cine 2023, Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau’s Retrospectivem

Credits

Directed, Written, and Produced by: THAIS GUISASOLA & SIMON(E) JAIKIRIUMA PAETAU | Collaboration Script: ALICIA ARTEAGA, DANIEL MARTINS, GIOVANNA PEZZO | Director of Photography: GIOVANNA PEZZO | Art Director/Costume Designer: ALICIA ARTEAGA | Assistant Producer/Direct Sound: DANIEL MARTINS | Editor: ILKA MIRIAM VALDÉS | Sound Design & Mix: RUBEN VALDÉS | Colorist: JULIA BISILIAT | Post Production Supervisor: LAURA FUTURO | Special Effects: SUNJHA KIM | Design & Illustrations: CARLOS CABRICES & SERGIO FERRO | Associate Producers: LILLIT, DRAMA FILMES, MARTIN BACKHAUS | Dramaturgy: LAURA PAETAU, MARGARITA TSOMOU | Music: AÉREA NEGROT, PEACHES, MAD KATE I THE TIDE, ROYAL DUST, MERCENÁRIAS, AND THE CLITOR$.

Reviews

Six films at the Cartagena International Film Festival show sexual identity as something fluid and peripheral. Insurgency today is about knowing oneself as a hybrid, and that is well understood by those who want to get a message across: we human beings are not one, we are several at once.
Revista Semana / ‘Queer’ is the new punk / 20.02.2018

The balance is one of good cinema, with awards that ratify an open and inclusive position. For example (…) the bold choice of films like the Colombian-Brazilian ‘The Whisper of the Jaguar’, a self-proclaimed queer punk road movie, awarded for its direction (to Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau and Thais Guisasola) in the Colombian cinema category.
El Tiempo / The Cartagena Film Festival and its open and inclusive stance / 05.03.2018

‘The Whisper of the Jaguar’ won the Best Director award in the Official Colombian Film Competition.
El Heraldo / These are the winners of FICCI 2018 / 06.03.2018

(…) and in this female vindication, it is no surprise that love is lesbian, or that the historicist discourse attempts to give voice to generations of female ancestors who were subdued, kidnapped, raped, and subjected to the will of men and European occupiers; (…)
Nos hacemos un cine / The Whisper of the Jaguar / 25.03.2018

Just like this film by Paetau and Guisasola, which does not hide its exuberance: geographical, poetic, and narrative, nor its determination to question and reflect on the historical oppression of women, the colonized and exploited condition of the Amazon rainforest, or the limitations and tyranny of archetypes and prejudices related to sexual diversity.
El Colombiano / Amazonian Queer Cinema / 14.07.2018

What it’s all about becomes very (very) clear at some point: to acquire and embody resistant knowledge, to find a non-ego-determined position that refuses the great either/or of the normative world.
Sissy / The Healing Poison of an Angry Frog / 03.10.2018

The auteur cinema from southern countries is often nourished by colonial images. When we do not repeat this exoticizing image of Latin America, our message is invalidated.
Friction Magazine / ‘O Susurro do Jaguar’: queer bodies on a decolonial road trip in the heart of the Amazon jungle / October 2018

After its world premiere in 2017 at Documenta 14 and the premiere at the Cartagena Film Festival in Colombia, the Brazilian and German-Colombian directing duo Thais Guisasola and Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau bring their work ‘The Whisper of the Jaguar’ to German cinemas.
Queer.de, Corncobs Up the Ass / 04.10.2018

Filmed in calm, colorful imagery, the film unfolds a trippy flow, but Brazil’s political reality also resonates in the news and the comments of a healer. The Amazon is not staged as a mystical jungle, as Werner Herzog so masterfully understands, but as a magnificent landscape in which a person can find themselves anew.
Der Tagesspiegel / ‘The Whisper of the Jaguar’ in theaters: A film like a trip / 04.10.2018

Breaking binaries, borders and linear time, The Whisper of the Jaguar offers a spiritual, dreamlike salve to Westem-dominated notions of rational and scientific knowledge. It might also be the clarion call for queer resistance world-over.
Sieggessäule / Road-tripping / November 2018