The Waters of Lethe

Elena (2012, directed by Petra Costa) is an example of the widening scope of the documentary. It's a film that suggests that the word, "documentary," is insufficient to encompass all of the kinds of non-fiction films that are being made at this moment in time. Elena is factual, true, but it's a film that filters that factuality through a haze of memory, emotion, personal experience, and no small amount of visual poetry into a meditation on death and memory that transcends a dry recitation of facts and narrative.

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