Movies like Embrace of the Serpent (2015)
The best movies like Embrace of the Serpent (2015) are Dersu Uzala (1975), The Mosquito Coast (1986) and Land and Shade (2015). If Embrace of the Serpent hooked you with its drama and adventure, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedDersu Uzala (1975)7.9/10 from 669 votes
- NewestMagellan (2025)Released 2025
- In SpanishLand and Shade (2015)Also in Spanish
Dersu Uzala (1975)
A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Mosquito Coast (1986)
An inventor spurns his city life and moves his family into the jungles of Central America to make a utopia.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & adventure
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLand and Shade (2015)
Alfonso is an old farmer who has returned home to tend to his son, who is gravely ill. He rediscovers his old house, where the woman who was once his wife still lives, with his daughter-in-law and grandson. The landscape that awaits him resembles a wasteland. Vast sugar cane plantations surround the house, producing perpetual clouds of ash. 17 years after abandoning them, Alfonso tries to fit back in and save his family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFitzcarraldo (1982)
Fitzcarraldo is a dreamer who plans to build an opera house in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, so, in order to finance his project, he embarks on an epic adventure to collect rubber, a very profitable product, in a remote and unexplored region of the rainforest.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & adventure
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCobra Verde (1987)
A fearsome 19th century bandit, Cobra Verde cuts a swath through Brazil until he arrives at the sugar plantation of Don Octávio Countinho. Not knowing that his new guest is the notorious bandit and impressed by his ruthless ways, Don Octávio hires Cobra Verde to oversee his slaves. But when Cobra Verde impregnates Don Octávio’s three daughters, the incensed plantation owner exiles the outlaw to Africa where he is expected to reopen the slave trade. Following his trans-Atlantic journey, Cobra Verde exploits tribal conflicts to commandeer an abandoned fortress and whips an army of naked warriors into a frenzied bloodlust as he vies for survival.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (2023)
Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
A few decades after the destruction of the Inca Empire, a Spanish expedition led by the infamous Aguirre leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon River in search of the lost city of El Dorado. When great difficulties arise, Aguirre’s men start to wonder whether their quest will lead them to prosperity or certain death.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLetter Never Sent (1960)
Four geologists are searching for diamonds in the wilderness of Siberia. After a long and tiresome journey they manage to find their luck and put the diamond mine on the map. The map must be delivered back to Moscow. But on the day of their departure a terrible forest fire wreaks havoc, and the geologists get trapped in the woods.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & adventure
Worth the HypeMovies like thisZama (2017)
In a remote South American colony in the late 18th century, officer Zama of the Spanish crown waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. He suffers small humiliations and petty politicking as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Emerald Forest (1985)
For ten years, engineer Bill Markham has searched tirelessly for his son Tommy who disappeared from the edge of the Brazilian rainforest. Miraculously, he finds the boy living among the reclusive Amazon tribe who adopted him. This is when Bill's adventure truly begins.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Crossing of the Andes (2011)
Buenos Aires, 1880. A journalist interviews Manuel Esteban Corvalán, one of the last living men who crossed the Andes in 1817 with José de San Martín, during the Argentinian and Chilean wars of independence, as one of his secretaries, when he was only 15 years old.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & adventure
Mountains of the Moon (1990)
The story of Captain Richard Francis Burton's and Lt. John Hanning Speke's expedition to find the source of the Nile river in the name of Queen Victoria's British Empire.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMagellan (2025)
At the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan leads an expedition under the Spanish crown in search of the first westward route to the Spice Islands. He embarks on a perilous journey across the uncharted Pacific, where his fleet faces starvation, mutiny, and the psychological toll of endless seas. Upon reaching the shores of Cebu, Magellan is pulled into a fatal conflict with the natives by his drive to spread Catholicism, culminating in his tragic doom.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAt Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991)
Martin and Hazel Quarrier are small-town fundamentalist missionaries sent to the jungles of South America to convert the Indians. Their remote mission was previously run by the Catholics, before the natives murdered them all. They are sent by the pompous Leslie Huben, who runs the missionary effort in the area but who seems more concerned about competing with his Catholic 'rivals' than in the Indians themselves. Hazel is terrified of the Indians while Martin is fascinated. Soon American pilot Lewis Moon joins the Indian tribe but is attracted by Leslie's young wife, Andy. Can the interaction of these characters and cultures, and the advancing bulldozers of civilization, avoid disaster?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Mission (1986)
When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter is converted and joins his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portuguese aggressors.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Revenant (2015)
In the 1820s, a frontiersman, Hugh Glass, sets out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & adventure
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Lost City of Z (2017)
A true-life drama in the 1920s, centering on British explorer Col. Percy Fawcett, who discovered evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization in the Amazon and disappeared whilst searching for it.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Wind Journeys (2009)
After his wife's death, a vallenato singer from Majagual, Sucre, decides to quit music and return his allegedly cursed accordion to his master. He is joined by Fermín Morales, a teenage boy who admires him and wishes to follow his footsteps. Together, they start a journey throughout several towns in Northern Colombia to Taroa, in La Guajira desert, where the singer's master supposedly lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & adventure
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWolf Totem (2015)
In 1969, a young Beijing student, Chen Zhen, is sent to live among the nomadic herdsmen of Inner Mongolia. Caught between the advance of civilization from the south and the nomads' traditional enemies - the marauding wolves - to the north; humans and animals, residents and invaders alike, struggle to find their true place in the world.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisParadise War: The Story of Bruno Manser (2019)
1984: Searching for an experience that goes deeper than the superficiality of modern civilization, Bruno Manser travels into the jungles of Borneo and finds it with the nomadic Penan tribe. It is an encounter that changes his life forever. When the existence of the Penan is threatened by relentless deforestation, Manser takes up the fight against logging with a courage and determination that makes him one of the most renowned and credible environmentalists of his time. Eventually, it costs him everything. Based on a true story.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & adventure
Walkabout (1971)
Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisApocalypto (2006)
Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHeart of Darkness (1994)
A trading company manager travels up an African river to find a missing outpost head and discovers the depth of evil in humanity's soul.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisNo Chains, No Masters (2024)
1759, Mauritius Island, Indian Ocean. The island is controlled by French settlers and the deported slave population live in fear while toiling in the sugar cane plantations. Unlike her disillusioned father Massamba, 16-year-old Mati refuses to keep her head down and accept her fate.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAtanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2002)
Based on a local legend and set in an unknown era, it deals with universal themes of love, possessiveness, family, jealousy and power. Beautifully shot, and acted by Inuit people, it portrays a time when people fought duels by taking turns to punch each other until one was unconscious, made love on the way to the caribou hunt, ate walrus meat and lit their igloos with seal-oil lamps.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSurvive! (1976)
A Uruguayan rugby team crashes in the Andes Mountains and has to survive the extremely cold temperatures and rough climate. As some of the people die, the survivors are forced to make a terrible decision between starvation and cannibalism.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisEven the Rain (2011)
As a director and his crew shoot a controversial film about Christopher Columbus in Cochabamba, Bolivia, local people rise up against plans to privatize the water supply.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlack Robe (1991)
Missionary Father LaForgue travels to the New World in hopes of converting Algonquin Indians to Catholicism. Accepted, though warily, by the Indians, LaForgue travels with the Indians using his strict Catholic rules and ideals to try and impose his religion.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both adventure & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEdge of the World (2021)
Sarawak, in the northeast of the island of Borneo, 1839. Almost by chance, the British adventurer James Brooke is appointed rajah by the Sultan of Brunei, and as an independent ruler he embarks on a personal crusade to eradicate piracy, slavery and headhunting, while trying to curb the malevolent expansionist ambitions of the British Empire.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & adventure
SnoozefestMovies like thisIxcanul (2015)
María, a 17-year-old Kaqchikel Maya, lives with her parents on a coffee plantation at the foot of an active volcano. She is set to be married to the farm's foreman. But María longs to discover the world on the other side of the mountain, a place she cannot even imagine. And so she seduces a coffee-harvester who wants to escape to the USA. When this man leaves her behind, María discovers her own world and culture anew.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Embrace of the Serpent?
The closest matches to Embrace of the Serpent are Dersu Uzala (1975), The Mosquito Coast (1986) and Land and Shade (2015). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Embrace of the Serpent?
People who watched Embrace of the Serpent most often go on to Dersu Uzala (1975), The Mosquito Coast (1986) and Land and Shade (2015).
What is the highest-rated movie like Embrace of the Serpent?
Dersu Uzala (1975), rated 7.9/10 by 669 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Embrace of the Serpent?
Magellan (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Spanish movies like Embrace of the Serpent?
Yes: Land and Shade (2015), Zama (2017) and The Crossing of the Andes (2011).
How are movies similar to Embrace of the Serpent chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Embrace of the Serpent, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.