Private Project

Yagé is Our Life

Winner of the Respect Human Rights Film Festival and currently showing at film festivals internationally, Yagé is Our Life is a documentary film set in the Putumayo region of Colombia. For centuries the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon have been using yagé (sometimes known as ayahuasca) for the health, social cohesion and spiritual guidance of their communities. Yagé is rich in the potent psychedelic substance DMT and for these indigenous groups it is sacred, allowing them access to ancient wisdom and the spirits of nature. In their ceremonies, the taitas or traditional doctors use yagé to treat their patients for physical and emotional illnesses and as a guide for making decisions.


The communities are now facing many new threats to their traditional way of life. Primarily, the commercialisation of their yagé medicine and foreign pressures exerted on their homelands by industrialised civilisation. This film gives indigenous leaders from the region a platform to discuss these issues and the importance of yagé as a living tradition in their communities.


  • Sean Lovell
    Director
    Sporting Mavericks: Faustino Asprilla; The Road to Tripoli; The Wolf Within; Demobilised; The Legend of El Dorado; Las Orquídias; Children Change Colombia; The Dog Guardian; The Journey of Life;
  • Neil White
    Director
  • Lesly Vela
    Producer
  • Taita Querubin Queta
    Key Cast
  • Taita Isaias
    Key Cast
  • David Gellman
    Researchers
  • Heiner Dörfler
    Researchers
  • Filippos Anagnostopoulos
    Researchers
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Genres:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    24 minutes 26 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 20, 2016
  • Production Budget:
    2,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    Colombia
  • Language:
    Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    HD 1920x1080
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Respect Belfast Human Rights Film Festival
    Belfast
    United Kingdom
    March 5, 2017
    UK
    AWARD WINNER - Best International Short Film
  • Beyond Psychedelics
    Prague
    Czech Republic
    September 30, 2016
    European Premiere
Director Biography - Sean Lovell, Neil White

Sean Lovell is a British director who has worked on a variety of films for 14 years; he is particularly dedicated to working on social justice, environmental and charity films. Sean has been living in Colombia for the last 3 years working on various such films and collaborated with Ancestral Seeds to produce Yagé is Our Life in order to help raise awareness about the situation affecting indigenous groups in Putumayo, Colombia.

Neil White is the Director of Ancestral Seeds, along with the film's Producer Lesly White.

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