Iwianch, the Devil Deer is a compelling anthropological documentary that delves into the spiritual worldview of the Achuar people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. When a young Achuar boy disappears deep within the rainforest, his family turns to a local shaman, who enters a trance and reveals that the boy has been taken by Iwianch—a supernatural entity mistranslated into Spanish as "the Devil Deer." The shaman, however, offers hope: he has shown the boy the way back.

As the community awaits the boy’s return, the film gradually dissolves the boundaries between myth and reality. Through the lens of the filmmaker—who becomes both witness and participant—we are invited to question Western constructs of truth and reality.

Filmed in territories under threat from extractivist industries, the documentary also serves as a vital environmental testimony. It captures not only endangered biodiversity but the fragile transmission of ancestral knowledge at risk of vanishing alongside the land.

“Iwianch, for the most part, feels like a real time tragedy… but Cardoso, manages to make this into an eerie tale of belief and disbelief, the known and the unknown.”- Harry Jones, Cinema Reviews

"It’s at once documentary, investigative, horror, and cultural, not to mention that it is self-reflexive about the nature of stories and story-telling via myth and via film. A very unique, compelling, and interesting documentary!” – Kathy Susca The Film Collaborative

“Iwianch, the Devil Deer conveys such an immense depth of meaning through the story it tells and through the stories it shares. It is appreciated how the film resists the notion of a story as needing to be complete in order to communicate and remember. It is also appreciated how the film offers deep reverence to the Achuar Shuar peoples and their knowledge of the Amazon jungle and its history.” – Amir George True/False Film Fest

Coming soon.

A MARC record for this title is not available yet.

Ann Arbor Film Festival - Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker; Cali Environmental Film Festival - Best Enviromental Latin American Film; Jumara Indigenous Film Festival Panama - Best Documentary Film; imagineNATIVE Film Festival USA; Cinélatino Rencontres de Toulouse