Elena

When Petra Costa was seven her older sister Elena left São Paulo for New York to become an actress, and killed herself there at twenty. Two decades later Petra goes to the same city as an actress herself and works with whatever survived of her sister: home movies, press clippings, a diary, letters and tape recordings. The form comes out of that material, with the narration built as a letter addressed directly to Elena and the images of the two sisters at times bleeding into one another. Its hardest passage is their mother stepping in front of the camera. The result is not a thesis about grief but a record of how carrying a loss became a family occupation. Who it is for: viewers who like personal documentary and poetic archive film. Who it is not for: anyone who needs to avoid suicide and depression.