Elena

Elena (2013)

A Brazilian actress travels to New York in search of her long-lost sister, piecing together fragments of the past while confronting the lasting scars of the Brazilian dictatorship.

Date of release
2013-04-11
TMDB
7.3 / 10 (101)
Runtime
1h 22m
Genres
Documentary, Drama
Director
Petra Costa

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: New York City

Elena is a 2012 Brazilian documentary film directed by Petra Costa. It is based on the life of the actress Elena Andrade, Petra Costa's older sister.

Production

The idea of making a film about her sister came about when the director, Petra Costa, was 17 and she came across one of Elena’s old diaries at home, written when she was the same age; just 13. “I had the strange feeling that I was reading my own words, as if it was my diary”, describes Petra. She had a powerful sense of identification with her sister.

Petra discovered around 50 hours of home video footage filmed by her sister, of which at least 20 hours had been filmed the year that Petra was born. At 13, Elena received her first video camera. Straight away, Petra began to interview around 50 relatives and friends of Elena, gathering together a total of 200 hours of footage.

As well as New York and São Paulo, several scenes from Elena were filmed in Bahia as well as Barra do Una, in the region of São Sebastião, on the coastal region of the São Paulo province. The film took two and a half years to produce, and had its premiere at the 45th Festival de Brasília, in September 2012, where Elena won prizes for best director, best art direction, best editing and best film according to the public jury, all within the documen…

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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