Movie: The Man Who Drank the Universe

Top 6 Billed Cast

Alistair Appleton
Alistair Appleton

Himself

Amanda Fidler
Amanda Fidler

Herself

Fiona Macotty
Fiona Macotty

Herself

Sue Minns
Sue Minns

Herself

Silvia Polivoy
Silvia Polivoy

Herself

Gary Reich
Gary Reich

Himself

  • HomePage

  • Overview

    It is late 2004, and 34-year-old Englishman Alistair Appleton is about to fly from London to the Brazilian coast, where he will drink ayahuasca for the first time. With wit, insight, and sensitivity, Alistair shares this experience with us, and chats with some fellow participants before and after the ayahuasca ceremonies. For the past few years, Alistair had been working as a television presenter. In 2000, he started making trips to the Centre for World Peace and Health in Scotland to learn how to meditate. When clinical psychologist Silvia Polivoy opened an ayahuasca healing center in Bahia in 2004, Alistair faced his fears and seized the opportunity to attend.

  • Release Date

    2005-01-01

  • Average

    8

  • Rating:

    4.0 starts
  • Tagline

  • Genres

  • Languages:

    English
  • Keywords

Recommendations Movies

DMT: The Spirit Molecule
61%

DMT: The Spirit Molecule(en)

2010-10-15

THE SPIRIT MOLECULE weaves an account of Dr. Rick Strassman's groundbreaking DMT research through a multifaceted approach to this intriguing hallucinogen found in the human brain and hundreds of plants, including the sacred Amazonian brew, ayahuasca. Utilizing interviews with a variety of experts to explain their thoughts and experiences with DMT, and ayahuasca, within their respective fields, and discussions with Strassman’s research volunteers, brings to life the awesome effects of this compound, and introduces us to far-reaching theories regarding its role in human consciousness.

Pray Away
67%

Pray Away(en)

2021-06-16

In the 1970s, five men struggling with being gay in their Evangelical church started a bible study to help each other leave the "homosexual lifestyle." They quickly received over 25,000 letters from people asking for help and formalized as Exodus International, the largest and most controversial conversion therapy organization in the world. But leaders struggled with a secret: their own “same-sex attractions” never went away. After years as Christian superstars in the religious right, many of these men and women have come out as LGBTQ, disavowing the very movement they helped start. Focusing on the dramatic journeys of former conversion therapy leaders, current members, and a survivor, PRAY AWAY chronicles the “ex gay" movement’s rise to power, persistent influence, and the profound harm it causes.

Limitless
72%

Limitless(en)

2011-03-17

The life of an unsuccessful writer is transformed by a top-secret 'smart drug' that allows him to use 100% of his brain and become a perfect version of himself. His enhanced abilities soon attract shadowy forces that threaten his new life.

Every Breath You Take
58%

Every Breath You Take(en)

2021-04-02

A psychiatrist, whose client commits suicide, finds his family life disrupted after introducing her surviving brother to his wife and daughter.

Heal
72%

Heal(en)

2017-10-20

A documentary film that takes us on a scientific and spiritual journey where we discover that by changing one's perceptions, the human body can heal itself from any disease.

Stutz
75%

Stutz(en)

2022-11-13

In candid conversations with actor Jonah Hill, leading psychiatrist Phil Stutz explores his early life experiences and unique, visual model of therapy.

Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste
61%

Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste(en)

2022-11-05

A sexual wellness company gains fame and followers, then members come forward with shocking allegations.

Tab Hunter Confidential
73%

Tab Hunter Confidential(en)

2015-03-15

Throughout the 1950s, Tab Hunter reigned as Hollywood’s ultimate male heartthrob. But throughout his years of stardom, Tab had a secret. Tab Hunter was gay, and spent his Hollywood years in a precarious closet that repeatedly threatened to implode and destroy him. Tab Hunter himself shares first hand, for the first time, what it was like to be a studio manufactured movie star during the Golden Age of Hollywood and the consequences of being someone totally different from his studio manufactured image.

Off the Grid
60%

Off the Grid(en)

2025-06-27

After a morally-bankrupt company tries to weaponize a brilliant scientist's revolutionary technology, he goes off the grid to safeguard humanity. When the company sends a strike force to find him, they make their biggest mistake of all – they weaponize the man they are trying to catch.

Paris Is Burning
80%

Paris Is Burning(en)

1991-03-13

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.

Bad Times at the El Royale
68%

Bad Times at the El Royale(en)

2018-10-04

Lake Tahoe, 1969. Seven strangers, each one with a secret to bury, meet at El Royale, a decadent motel with a dark past. In the course of a fateful night, everyone will have one last shot at redemption.

Black Widow
62%

Black Widow(en)

1987-02-06

Federal agent Alexandra Barnes believes that Catherine Petersen is a serial killer who marries rich men and then murders them for their money. But since Catherine is seemingly a master of disguise and has multiple identities, Alexandra can't prove anything with conventional detective work. With no other option, she goes undercover, pursuing the same man as Catherine, and hoping that Catherine will slip up and reveal her true identity.

Interrogation
58%

Interrogation(en)

2016-08-20

After the FBI receives a threat that endangers the entire city, an interrogator and an I.T. specialist are plunged into a series of mind games with a criminal mastermind, desperately racing against time to uncover the villain's true agenda as they fight to protect thousands of lives.

Hard Target
65%

Hard Target(en)

1993-04-27

When a woman's father goes missing, she enlists a local to aid in her search. The pair soon discover that her father has died at the hands of a wealthy sportsman who hunts homeless men as a form of recreation.

Sunray: Fallen Soldier
63%

Sunray: Fallen Soldier(en)

2025-01-24

Forced to confront the death of his daughter following a fatal encounter with drugs, ex-military soldier Andy becomes hell-bent on finding those responsible. With nothing to lose, a violent criminal underworld unravels in his wake.

Our Kind of Traitor
61%

Our Kind of Traitor(en)

2016-05-05

A young Oxford academic and his attorney girlfriend holiday in Morocco. They bump into a Russian millionaire who owns a peninsula and a diamond watch. He wants a game of tennis. What else he wants propels the lovers on a tortuous journey to the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain's intelligence establishment, to Paris and the Alps.

Marwencol
72%

Marwencol(en)

2010-03-12

After a vicious attack leaves him brain-damaged and broke, Mark Hogancamp seeks recovery in "Marwencol", a 1/6th scale World War II-era town he creates in his backyard.

Band of the Hand
62%

Band of the Hand(en)

1986-04-11

An Indian Vietnam veteran trains five street punks in the Everglades to fight vice in Miami.

Push
61%

Push(en)

2009-02-04

After his father, an assassin, is brutally murdered, Nick Gant vows revenge on Division, the covert government agency that dabbles in psychic warfare and experimental drugs. Hiding in Hong Kong's underworld, Nick assembles a band of rogue psychics dedicated to destroying Division. Together with Cassie, a teenage clairvoyant, Nick goes in search of a missing girl and a stolen suitcase that could be the key to accomplishing their mutual goal.

Falcon Rising
63%

Falcon Rising(en)

2014-09-05

Chapman is an ex-marine in Brazil's slums, battling the yakuza outfit who attacked his sister and left her for dead.

Similar Movies

heroes
100%

heroes(en)

2020-11-11

Displaying the faces and voices of transgender youth, the documentary short shows the authenticity of queer and trans people living in Toronto, while simultaneously discussing the struggles for self-acceptance that people who do not conform to cisgender and heteronormative ideals of gender face. Andy Nguyen, trans director and film student, captures his trans friends in their natural state on 16mm film shot on a Bolex h16 camera. Accompanied by narration written and recited by Salem Rao, this film represents that trans people exist and this is what we look like. Regardless of the obvious everyday transphobia, trans people find community and uniqueness within each other and themselves.

Fabulous
65%

Fabulous(fr)

2019-06-07

Ninja is famous around the world for her fierce ballroom performances, but she is not as well-known in her native country of French Guyana. But a trip home to teach a workshop might change that.

Tgirls Make Music
0%

Tgirls Make Music(en)

2026-02-26

A documentary about trans woman rapper and producer htmljones (Ishaani Ponniah), framed through the visual language of early-2000s television, 2010s internet aesthetics, and contemporary British culture.

Are You Proud?
21%

Are You Proud?(en)

2019-07-26

Are You Proud? is a vivid and engaged docu-celebration of the LGBT rights movement from the partial victory of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act to Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front , the AIDS crisis, Legal Marriage and finally the 2016 Pulse night club shooting. The film gives an extensive history of the course of LGBT rights campaigning, but it also shows how much more work there is to be done.

Out of the Closet, Off the Screen: The Life of William Haines
57%

Out of the Closet, Off the Screen: The Life of William Haines(en)

2001-06-13

Chronicles the life of William Haines, Hollywood's first openly gay movie star, who sacrificed his career to live openly with his lover.

Two Spirits
43%

Two Spirits(en)

2009-06-21

Fred Martinez was a Navajo youth slain at the age of 16 by a man who bragged to his friends that he 'bug-smashed a fag'. But Fred was part of an honored Navajo tradition - the 'nadleeh', or 'two-spirit', who possesses a balance of masculine and feminine traits.

Dressed in Blue
60%

Dressed in Blue(es)

1983-09-06

A documentary about the lives of six transgender women in post-Franco Spain.

Ayahuasca Now
0%

Ayahuasca Now(en)

2024-01-01

After many years of life marked by PTSD, men and women veterans of the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq travel to the Peruvian Amazon to participate in shamanic ceremonies to heal their traumas.

I Am My Own Woman
46%

I Am My Own Woman(de)

1992-10-30

The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

Battle of Soho
27%

Battle of Soho(en)

2017-05-01

In November 2014 the Iconic club Madame Jojos closed its doors. This event being interpreted by many as the death knell of Soho.The gentrification of Soho affects the LGBT community and its Drag Queen sub-culture, but the cabaret atmosphere of the entire neighborhood in enormous ways. This active pursuit to destroy a bubbling and vibrant part of the city's heart is viewed by many as an atrocity akin to turning the lights off on Broadway. Over 3rd of London's music venues have been closed in recent years and no one noticed. An active movement to bring a halt to this disaster has begun to unfold with one organization after another emerging to fight for Soho. Organizations made up of citizens and celebrities have sprung up to combat this onslaught. Will they win this battle and save Soho?

In Search of Avery Willard
34%

In Search of Avery Willard(en)

2012-06-19

In Search of Avery Willard iIlluminates the life and work of the groundbreaking, and mostly forgotten, artist Avery Willard — photographer, filmmaker, writer, publisher, leatherman, pornographer.

Siamo qui
0%

Siamo qui(it)

2024-05-26

Activists of the LGBTQ+ association Rain Arcigay Caserta come back living in a property given to them in concession, confiscated from the Camorra in Castel Volturno. The goal is to reconnect with the local inhabitants and propose a new idea of ​​sharing and regenerating the park.

A Tight, Warm Hug
0%

A Tight, Warm Hug(en)

2024-12-13

Lucy Rose, a transgender woman, shares her journey of self-love and empowerment since starting hormone replacement therapy three years ago. The film is part animation, part documentary and part VHS archive footage.

La face cachée de l'homme en noir
68%

La face cachée de l'homme en noir(fr)

2025-07-16

You've seen him interview Mikhail Gorbachev, Angelina Jolie, Robbie Williams, Mariah Carey, Brad Pitt, Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro... You know him, but you don't really know him. Everyone has talked about Ardisson without ever getting close to the truth about him. My ambition: to reveal the man behind the costume of "The Man in Black." I thought to myself: if anyone can figure him out, it's me, a journalist and portraitist who has lived with him for 15 years. Who is the private Thierry behind the spectacular Ardisson? What we discover is how much Ardisson's personal history reflects the eras he has lived through, their contradictions, their utopias, their excesses, their violence. Like so many facets of a man and of society at the turn of the century.

Ardisson, l'Homme en Noir : l'hommage
0%

Ardisson, l'Homme en Noir : l'hommage(fr)

2025-07-15

This tribute program takes you back into the world of Thierry Ardisson, a particularly creative, provocative, and erudite host and producer. From "Tout le monde en parle" to "Salut les Terriens !", via "Lunettes noires pour nuits blanches", the program retraces his more than 40-year career and his extraordinary journey, featuring cult interviews, testimonials, and archive footage. Numerous guests will pay tribute to him and share their memories and anecdotes on set. Thierry Ardisson, "the man in black," shook up the French audiovisual landscape and left his mark on his era. The program is broadcast on all TV5 Monde channels and on TV5 Québec/Canada.

The Scavengers
87%

The Scavengers(pt)

1993-01-01

In this documentary Coutinho examines the plight of the people who live off the waste of the Brazilian cities. These people make their living by scavenging the immense urban garbage dumps searching for whatever they can find to sell as well as whatever they can find to eat.

Revealing Anne Lister
10%

Revealing Anne Lister(en)

2010-05-31

Early 19th-century England is usually seen through the eyes of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. Sue Perkins explores a dramatically different version, as lived and recorded by Anne Lister. A Yorkshire landowner, she kept a detailed, partly coded diary, revealing graphic details of her love affairs with women. Regency England was surprisingly tolerant of Anne's chosen lifestyle, and it was only when Anne sought to sink a coal mine on her land that criticism of her private life became public.

The Circle
65%

The Circle(de)

2014-09-18

A young teacher in Zurich in the 1950s falls in love with a transvestite star but is torn between his bourgeois existence and his commitment to homosexuality. He joins a gay organization that is eventually seen as the pioneer of gay emancipation in Europe.

Tarnation
68%

Tarnation(en)

2003-10-19

Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.

Trade Center
36%

Trade Center(en)

2021-03-16

The voices of five gay men who cruised for sex at the World Trade Center in the 1980s and 1990s haunt the sanitized, commerce-driven landscape that is the newly rebuilt Freedom Tower campus.