About the film

An intimate and poetic film on a heartrending subject.The Brazilian Petra's mother tells her that she can live anywhere in the world she likes, except in New York. And that she can study anything she wants, except drama. But Petra wants to act, just like her mother and her sister Elena, who left for New York when Petra was seven. When Petra, now an adult, sets out for New York to look for her sister, the pieces of the puzzle gradually start to fall into place. Elena creates a beautiful mosaic from video material, photos and letters from the family archives, woven together by the kindly voice of filmmaker Petra Costa. Elena is her first feature-length film, and like her previous short “Undertow Eyes”, it tells a highly personal story. The collage of archive footage and recent – at times staged – film material evokes a dreamy atmosphere. It offers space for the beautiful metaphors Costa creates, often with references to Greek mythology, which give insight into the fragile story that slowly unravels. The film does not nail down cause and effect, but rather throws out all kinds of lines that get us thinking. This subtly makes it clear to the viewer what kind of baggage Petra has to cope with.

Wybrane festiwale i nagrody / Selected festivals and awards: 2012 – MFF Amsterdam / IDFA