Petra Costa

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Petra Costa, 2013

Petra Costa (born July 8, 1983 in Belo Horizonte ) is a Brazilian filmmaker.

Youth and education

Petra Costa was born to parents who opposed the military dictatorship in Brazil and were imprisoned for it. She was born at the end of the military dictatorship. Her grandfather was a co-founder of the Brazilian construction company Andrade Gutierrez . Apart from her parents, Costa's relatives were positive about the dictatorship. In 1990 her older sister Elena Andrade left Brazil for New York City to work as an actress. Petra Costa would later take up her search for her sister on film with the 2012 film Elena .

When Petra Costa was 14 years old, she began to work in theater and eventually studied theater studies at the University of São Paulo . This was followed by studying anthropology at Columbia University and finally psychology with a focus on trauma at the London School of Economics .

plant

The filmmaker Costa can be seen as stylistically and programmatically in the tradition of Agnès Varda .

Petra Costas debut as a screenwriter and film director was the   short - Documentary Undertow Eyes (Original title: Olhos de Ressaca ). The film portrays the grandparents of the director Vera and Gabriel Andrade and the development of their marriage. The film won awards as best short film at the Festival do Rio (Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival) 2009.

Petra Costa released her first feature-length film in 2012 with the documentary Elena . In the film, Costa portrayed her search for traces of her older sister Elena Andrade. This search is also a search for herself. With this film she became known. The New York Times described Elena as a dense expressionist collage that unfolds like a cinematic dream. It was the most watched documentary in Costa’s home country of Brazil in 2013.

Costa's second feature film was the Brazilian- Danish co-production of Olmo and the Seagull (2014) with Lea Glob about a couple of actors who are expecting a child. The documentary is located “between fiction and reality” thanks to the actors playing themselves with audible directing from the off .

This was followed by the documentation Am Rande der Demokratie (original title in Portuguese : Democracia em Vertigem ; English : The Edge of Democracy ). In the film, which was later streamed via Netflix , she portrays the disempowerment of Dilma Rousseff and the rise of Jair Bolsonaro . The documentary is enriched by Costa's personal life experiences. According to Petra Costa, the film is about the trauma of losing one's own country and the future of the country. On the Edge of Democracy is the third part of the trilogy with Undertow Eyes and Elena , in which Costa deals with her family history. The film can be understood as a warning for the US under Donald Trump , but also for other democracies. The film premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival . The film was nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Documentary in 2020 .

Web links

Commons : Petra Costa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Edge of Democracy Sydney Film Festival.
  2. ↑ 'The Edge Of Democracy' Offers An Intimate Look At Brazilian Politics In Flux , NPR, June 20, 2019.
  3. ↑ Elena: Heartbreak and sisterhood, beautifully rendered , The Globe and Mail, August 8, 2014.
  4. ↑ Biography on Petra Costa's homepage
  5. ↑ a b Oliver Junge, Where is Brazil going , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from June 19, 2019.
  6. ↑ Olhos de Ressaca / Undertow Eyes on IMDb .
  7. ↑ Elena in the IMDb .
  8. ^ Searching for Her Sister, as Well as for Herself , New York Times, May 30, 2014.
  9. ↑ Petra Costa at www.Filmfatales.org.
  10. ↑ Olmo and the Seagull on the Viennale website
  11. ↑ Christian Buß, Netflix documentary about Brazil: The bought democracy , Spiegel Online from June 26, 2019.
  12. ↑ a b Alex Billington, Sundance 2019: Petra Costa's Documentary 'The Edge of Democracy' , NZENews of February 3, 2019.
  13. ↑ Petra Costa in 10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch 2019 , Variety from April 25, 2019.
  14. ↑ Edge of Democracy , www.documentary.org of 29 October of 2019.
  15. ^ Adam Benzine, 'The Edge of Democracy' Acts as Warning Shot for America, Says Director , Hollywood Reporter, January 24, 2020.
  16. ↑ a b David Miranda, A new film argues that Brazil teeters on the brink of authoritarianism. It's true , The Guardian January 23, 2020.
  17. ↑ Shasta Darlington, This Oscar-nominated Brazil documentary is a warning for democracies around the world , CNN, February 3, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Costa, Petra
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian documentary filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1983
PLACE OF BIRTH Belo Horizonte