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Winner of the top prize at the 2013 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
Haunted by a song he once heard on the radio, American ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno tracked the exotic sounds to a Central African jungle tribe. He fell in love – with their way of life and with his future wife – and spent the next 25 years living among the Bayaka, recording more than 1000 hours of music and, eventually, starting a family.
When his Bayaka son, Samedi, is 13 years old, Sarno fulfils a promise to show the boy the world he came from, taking him to New York to meet family and friends (including his college buddy Jim Jarmusch). It is the first time Samedi has left the forest, and the first time in years Sarno has returned to a home he no longer recognises.
Contrasting the urban jungle with the African jungle, journalist and first-time filmmaker Michael Obert crafts an exquisitely gorgeously shot, moving study of a man caught between two incompatible worlds, and his relationship with his family, his heritage and his environment.
"Perceptive and utterly gorgeous … Song from the Forest compellingly foregrounds the ephemeral nature of all culture." – Indiewire