Snake Oil Song
Director: Micah Van Hove
United States, 2025, 97 min
Shooting Format:RED
Festival Year:2026
Category:Narrative Feature
Genres:Adventure, Drama, Hybrid-Fiction
Cast:Guillermo Subauste, Nelson Gonzales Garcia, Freddy Becerra, Raymond Steers, Tatiana Karen Sanabria
Crew:Writers: Micah Van Hove, Jeffrey Reeser. Producers: Micah Van Hove, Estephania Bonnett, Juan Pablo Caballero, Brett Pedersen. Editors: Micah Van Hove, Jeffrey Reeser; Executive Producers: Lynda Weinman, Alex C. Rudolph, Jim Cummings, Benjamin Wiessner, Zack Parker
Email:spiritapes@gmail.com
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 his life in jeopardy.
About the director
Micah Van Hove is a director, producer and cinematographer whose feature films include MENTHOL (SBIFF 2014), SHADOW OF A GUN (Knoxville Film Festival Audience Award 2018), and SUPER HEADY (NoBudge 2020). 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.
Micah has worked as a cinematographer and director on music videos for artists like Weyes Blood, Alex G, Leslie Stevens and Tim Heidecker. As a regular writer for No Film School from 2013-2019, Micah reached millions of readers in his effort to stimulate discourse around films that reflect a commitment to personal and courageous work. His latest film SNAKE OIL SONG (New/Next 2025) was shot on location in the Amazon jungle and won the President's Award at the 2026 George Lindsey Film Festival.
Filmmaker's note
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.