“Snake Oil Song isn’t afraid to tackle heavy themes, nor trudge through the jungle in search of cinematic truths. Director Micah Van Hove has worked as a film critic advocating for adventurous films invested with personal feeling, and made short films that have caught the attention of Werner Herzog, and this feature remarkably realizes the caliber of work he’s sought in his criticism and short-form films. Snake Oil Song exists in the same elite lineage as Herzog’s Aguirre, Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent, and Lucrecia Martel’s Zama. It’s a story set along the Amazon, in which the protagonist grapples with nature, dark external forces, and personal existential demons after the balance of his life is disrupted by an interfering gringo. In a world of too many safe and formulaic independent features, it’s an exhilarating and edifying breath of fresh (if tangibly hot and humid) air.” — Eric Allen Hatch
LOGLINE
When Chino is hired as a guide along the Amazon, an encounter with illegal gold miners causes his life on the river to unravel.
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SYNOPSIS
Chino spends his days on the outskirts of the Amazon river hunting the anaconda that ate his dog. When an American hires Chino as a river guide, an encounter with illegal gold miners puts their lives in jeopardy.
Director: Micah Van Hove
Writer(s): Micah Van Hove, Jeffrey Reeser
Producer(s): Micah Van Hove, Estephania Bonnett, Brett Pedersen, Juan Pablo Caballero, Lynda Weinman, Alex C. Rudolph, Jim Cummings, Benjamin Wiessner, Emily Ruhl, Zack Parker
Editor(s): Micah Van Hove, Jeffrey Reeser
Cinematographer(s): Juan Pablo Caballero
Principal cast: Guillermo Subauste, Nelson Garcia Gonzales, Freddy Beccera, Raymond Steers, Juliana Sanabria, Wilson Giraldo
Country of origin: USA
Countries of production: Colombia, USA, Spain, Canada
Language: Spanish, English, Huoo
Color — DCP — 5.1
2025 — 94 min
Micah Van Hove is a director, editor and cinematographer.
His first feature film MENTHOL (from the producer of BOYZ N THE HOOD) premiered at the 2014 Santa Barbara IFF. In 2018, SHADOW OF A GUN won the Narrative Feature Audience Award at the Knoxville Film Festival.
Micah's 2018 short film DEL ARCO VACÍO was selected as the #1 finalist for Black Factory Cinema's program with Werner Herzog in Peru and went on to screen with the Werner Herzog foundation in Munich.
He has worked as a cinematographer and director on music videos for artists like Weyes Blood, Alex G, Leslie Stevens and Tim Heidecker.
Director’s Statement
In the spirit of adventurous filmmaking in the jungle, we built the film out of the stories from people that we met in the Amazon and folded their realities into the fabric of our narrative universe. Shot on location in Colombia with the use of natural actors, we aim to capture a poetic balance between realism and genre-driven fiction. The jungle becomes a system of images, a language to highlight the divide between natural and unnatural, moral and immoral. This project was born out of a short film made under the mentorship of Werner Herzog in Peru in 2018.