An exotic, compelling journey up the headwaters of the Amazon with echoes of Fitzcarraldo and Apocalypse Now, the third film by Colombian director Ciro Guerra, Embrace of the Serpent, one of the nominees for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, has opened at TIFF Bell Lightbox just in time for the upcoming Academy Awards.

Based on two real-life scientific expeditions, 30 years apart, in the first half of the 20th century, this gorgeous splash of black and white cinematography is a searing indictment of colonialism and the Catholic Church, whose priests enslaved Indigenous children orphaned as collateral damage of the ravenous greed of the Colombian rubber barons.

So authentic is the look of the film it’s as if we’re watching found footage beautifully restored.

The two river journeys cover the same territory and Guerra deftly cuts back and forth between them. The film was inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers (the German,Theodor Koch-Grünberg, and the American, Richard Evans Schultes) who travelled through the Colombian Amazon in search of the yakruna, a rare, sacred plant with psychedelic and curative powers that grows on rubber trees. Each was guided by the same Amazonian tribesman, Karamakate, and it is his perspective which steers our perceptions; the American followed the German’s trail via notebooks he had kept that were published after his death. Not to be outdone, the filmmaker was looking for the soul of the Amazon itself. It’s no understatement to say that he found some of its shards.

The stunning photography (can I repeat myself enough?) is underscored by the film’s sound design which uses natural sounds of water, birds, insects and the force of the river itself to buttress the images. An ambient drone or ominous synthesizer guides our senses from time to time; the occasional notes of traditional flute music add to the authenticity of the setting. The American’s prized possession is a phonograph on which he listens incongruously to Haydn’s Creation. Even Karamakate, now aged and disconnected from his shamanistic powers, finds it curiously inoffensive.

At the film’s climax, the scientist’s  ingestion of the yakruna momentarily turns the black and white images to colour and the soundtrack explodes with a musical starburst.

Embrace of the Serpent is a road trip on water you’ll be glad to have taken, a spellbinding journey that doubles as forensic anthropology with a subtle, non-didactic ecological message.

The Lady in the Van, the engaging film by Nicholas Hytner, based on Alan Bennett’s 1989 memoir of his 15-year relationship with an elderly woman who lived in a van parked beside his front garden in North London’s Camden Town, benefits from a lively performance by Maggie Smith as “The Lady.” Fractious though she may be, with an upper-class hauteur that makes her prickly sense of entitlement almost charming, it’s her backstory, once we eventually come to understand it, that engages our sympathy and tugs at our emotions. Bennett turned his book into a play starring Smith in 1999, so she clearly owns the role. Coincidentally, after The Madness of King George and The History Boys, it’s the third time Hytner has successfully directed a Bennett adaptation of a Bennett play.

The movie opens with black and white footage of a young woman performing Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1. Even though Smith’s character, Mary Shepherd, cannot bear classical music -- she attacks a quartet of diverse street musicians playing at Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony early on -- we discover that she had been a piano student of Alfred Cortot’s in France before WWII. And that she had her love of music literally beaten out of her -- as she was playing Chopin -- by nuns in the convent where she was a novice. Our first clue that music had something to do with Shepherd’s mysterious past, comes when she visits a seniors’ club and enjoys listening to a young woman perform Schubert’s Impromptu Op.90, No.3 D899. The pianist is Clare Hammond, who also stands in for the young Miss Shepherd in the several excerpts from the second and third movements of the Chopin concerto, playing with a sensitive poignancy in the Larghetto Romanze and a restrained delicacy in the Vivace Rondo.

Among the artistic types who populate Gloucester Crescent, the leafy street where most of the film takes place, is the widow of Ralph Vaughan Williams, but it’s the eccentric outsider Bennett, who shares centre stage with Shepherd. He’s presented onscreen as two sides of himself, the knowing writer and the misfit who cycles around and engages his neighbours in small talk.

The writer side of the equation is constantly offering advice to his other half while commenting on the screen goings-on. It’s a clever device that bears fruit in the film’s final frames.

The formidable supporting cast -- Frances de la Tour, Roger Allam and Deborah Findlay as the neighbours -- includes History Boys’ alumni James Corden, Dominic Cooper, Russell Tovey and Samuel Barnett in brief cameos. But it’s Maggie Smith’s touching portrayal that stays with you long after.

The Lady in the Van opens at the Cineplex Odeon Varsity Cinema February 5 for an extended run.

Laszlo Nemes’ intense, intoxicating, immersive debut feature, Son of Saul, won the Grand Prize (the silver medal, if you will) at Cannes this year. A few days ago it took the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Now it's poised to win the Academy Award in the same category.

In Al Purdy Was Here dozens of literary talking heads led by Margaret Atwood bring the charismatic Canadian poet Al Purdy to life with anecdotes, reminiscences and first-hand history but it's the copious video evidence of Purdy himself that makes the best case for his unique voice. The fate of Purdy's Roblin Lake A-frame in Prince Edward County is the starting point for this thorough documentary directed by former Maclean's magazine film critic Brian D. Johnson and written by Johnson and his writer/editor wife Marni Jackson.. Elevating the proceedings are a number of songs inspired by Purdy's poetry that mainly succeed in their genre cross-pollination. Standouts include “Say the Names” performed by violinist Jesse Zubot, Giller Prize-winning novelist Joseph Boyden and the extraordinaryTanya Tagaq, who internalized Purdy's words (as spoken by Boyden) transforming them into raw emotional energy. Sarah Harmer performed her song about a place where music and art are welcome, the melancholic, moving, “Just Get There,” on the old upright piano in her house. Bruce Cockburn's “3 Al Purdys” ends the film, offering the singer-songwriter's own inimitable take on the poet, summing up the previous 90 minutes in a song.

Mavis! Is Jessica Edwards' inspirational film on the life of Mavis Staples, whose unique voice brought joy and happiness to millions as the most prominent member of the Staples Singers, a family act led by and directed with great foresight by Roebuck “Pops” Staples. Roebuck Staples grew up on a Mississippi plantation that also fostered the great bluesmen Howlin' Wolf and Charley Patton; Staples learned blues guitar from Patton, later incorporating it into his gospel music, thereby crossing a line that had never been crossed before.

The Staples Singers had a vast influence on people from Bob Dylan to Martin Luther King Jr. Dylan recalls hearing them as a 12-year-old: “Sit Down Servant made me stay up for a week,” he said. Why Am I Treated So Bad, which Pops wrote after he attended King's Montgomery Alabama church, was the Civil Rights leader's favourite song.

Informative talking heads (Bonnie Raitt, Chuck D, Levon Helm, Prince and more), a strong working relationship with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy (who revived her career after her father's death in 2000) and historical perspective from biographer Greg Kot combine with priceless archival footage to present a vivid picture of a musical force of nature.

Kot pointed out that her life touched on seven musical eras beginning in Chicago with Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls and Mahalia Jackson as neighbours. Raitt described her as “sensual without being salacious.” The Staples Singers were among the most popular gospel music acts (when gospel music was hugely popular in the post-WWII years). They had a style that harked back to the 1920s plus a deep tremolo that was electric when combined with reverb guitar.

Footage from a 1963 Westinghouse TV show, Folk Songs, and More Folk Songs, amusingly quaint, featured Dylan and the Staples; later appearances on television with Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton are no less culturally rich. Mavis appeared with The Band in The Last Waltz and recorded with Levon Helm and Steve Cropper. And brought her own gravitas to Prince's music (“Prince called – can you imagine?”).

Mavis! Plays at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema November 13-19 and December 7, 10, 14 and 17.

Director Jessica Edwards will participate in Q&As on November 13 at 4:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., and on November 14 at 4:00 p.m.