Elena

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by

Elena is at once a portrait, an autobiography and a history of family trauma.

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

A pained and gorgeous summoning, Petra Costa's haunted doc Elena dances with death, memory, and family, seducing viewers and then breaking their hearts.

RogerEbert.com by Christy Lemire

Intimate and impressionistic but ultimately a little self-indulgent.

Slant Magazine by Diego Semerene

This is a film about the invisible things passed down from generation to generation, that nasty inheritance that cages us into patterns and puzzles we try to solve in someone else's name.

The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck

Elena is an elegiac cinematic essay that is both haunting and unforgettable.

The Playlist by Katie Walsh

This is avant-garde autobiographical filmmaking at its finest, and the results are stunningly beautiful, and achingly emotional within a lyrical and dreamlike aesthetic.

Los Angeles Times by Sheri Linden

The result is a type of cinematic performance art, with all the self-consciousness that suggests — a sibling love story that's no less heartfelt for being in the form of a first-person poem.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

With its free-floating imagery, Elena unfolds like a cinematic dream whose central image is water, which symbolizes the washing away of grief. But more than that, it represents the stream of life, with beautiful images of women floating through time.