movielex
movie
L
ex

Movies like Elena

Key Features:
Sisterhood, Search, Filmmaking, Dictatorship, Family secrets, Memory, Identity, Loss, Home movies, Diary, New York City, Personal journey
Tone:
serious, restrained
Target Audience:
Film enthusiasts, Arthouse cinema lovers, Viewers interested in family dramas, Those interested in Brazilian history
Emotional Arc:
Longing → Discovery

Elena

2013-04-11
Elena Poster - Find Similar Movies

Petra heads to New York in search of her older sister after a long time of being separated. They are both movie actresses and heirs of the wounds of the Brazilian dictatorship. But Petra has only a few clues: home movies, newspaper clippings, a diary...

Genres
Documentary, Drama
Cast
Li An, Elena Andrade, Petra Costa
Crew
Petra Costa, Petra Costa, Carolina Ziskind
Rating
7.279(95 votes)
ElenaElena
Select exactly what you are looking for


Desire
Desire(2017)
5.945

Lucía and Ofelia, two sisters, finally meet after 7 years of cold relationships upon Lucia 's wedding. But when Juan, Lucia's husband, and Ofelia meet, they feel like a disruptive fantasy have enchanted their minds and bodies...



Tokyo Twilight
7.682

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.



Despite Everything

Sara, Lucía, Sofía and Claudia are sisters, 4 modern women with very different personalities, who come together at their mother's funeral, after which they discover the man they've all called "dad" throughout their lives is not really their father. They embark on a quest to discover who their real fathers are, discovering more about themselves, their mother, and their lives.



Vitória
Vitória(2025)
8.108

Nina is an elderly woman who lives alone and feels distressed by the increasing violence in her neighborhood. Amidst conflicts with her neighbors, she decides to film the movement of drug traffickers from her window, hoping to assist the police. After months of recording suspicious activities, her initiative attracts the attention of a journalist, who approaches Nina and offers to support her in her mission.



Siblings
Siblings(2025)
7.195

Irene lives in Rome. When her mother ask to, she go back to Rimini, her hometown, to take care of her autistic brother, Omar. She soon discover that Omar knows very well what to expect from the future, but in order to achieve his dreams, he need to be independent, which is why Irene begins a tender crash course to teach him adult life.



Teen's Confessions
6.3

Four sisters work together to raise rent money after learning they have to move to another neighborhood in this coming-of-age drama based on the series.



Minha Irmã e Eu
7.019

Sisters Mirian and Mirelly were born in the interior of Goiás, but live in different cities. When their mother disappears, the two put aside their differences and come together to look for her, on a journey that could change their lives.



Ana e Vitória
7.1

Two girls have a chance encounter and instantly befriend. While trying to find themselves, they decide to pursue music together.



Don't Tell
6.1

Sabina has a regular life. She is satisfied with her job and her love for Franco. Lately nightmares start disturbing her, and almost in the same time she discovers to be pregnant. Step by step she remembers her childhood spent within a severe middle-class family. But a big secret is hidden within her heart. Sabina wants to contact again her brother, a University teacher in the US, to try to understand what is happened in their past. What is the secret? She is determined to bring clarity and serenity in her life. She finally manages to free herself from her "beast in the heart".



Vitalina Varela
6.642

A Cape Verdean woman navigates her way through Lisbon, following the scanty physical traces her deceased husband left behind and discovering his secret, illicit life.



Brother and Sister
4.844

Alice and Louis are brother and sister. She is an actress; he was a teacher and poet. For more than 20 years, Alice has hated her brother. In all this time they haven’t seen one another. The death of their parents brings the siblings face to face.



Family Diary
7

Enrico is a struggling journalist in the Rome of 1945. He receives a phone call informing him that his younger brother Lorenzo has died. Enrico recalls their long and difficult relationship; he was brought up by their poor but warm-hearted grandmother, Lorenzo was raised as a gentleman by a wealthy local aristocrat. Reunited in the Florence of the 1930s, Enrico becomes his spoilt brother's keeper, forever haunted by a sense of guilty responsibility towards a man he both hates and loves.



Sara's Notebook
6.1

Laura has spent years looking for her sister Sara who went missing in the depths of the jungle in the Congo. Neither the NGO she works for, nor the embassy, have news on her whereabouts until a photo appears of Sara in a mining town. Apparently, Sara is being held captive by The Hawk, the fearsome rebel leader who controls the mafias behind the prized mineral coltan.



The Macaluso Sisters

Maria, Pinuccia, Lia, Katia and Antonella are five sisters who live in an apartment in Palermo. They make a living by renting doves for ceremonies. On a normal day at the beach, tragedy strucks.



Twenty Years Later
8.436

Eduardo Coutinho was filming a movie with the same name in the Northeast of Brazil, in 1964, when there came the military coup. He had to interrupt the project, and came back to it in 1981, looking for the same places and people, showing what had ocurred since then, and trying to gather a family whose patriarch, a political leader fighting for rights of country people, had been murdered.



Sun, Heart, Love
5.858

Eli has four children, an unemployed husband and a job with an almost impossible commute. Vale is single and makes ends meet by working in clubs as a dancer. Tied by a profound emotional bond of true sisterhood, the two women's lives are two sides of the same coin, but their mutual solidarity isn’t always enough to lighten the load of their difficult circumstances.



Diamonds
Diamonds(2024)
7.214

A film director gathers his favorite actresses, those he worked with and those he loved. He wants to make a film about women but he doesn’t reveal much: he observes them, takes cue, until his imaginary throw them into another era, in a past where the noise of the sewing machines fills a workplace handled and populated by women, where men have minor and marginal roles and cinema can be told from another point of view: the one of costume. Between loneliness, passions, anxieties, heartbreaking absence and unbreakable bonds, reality and fiction permeate, as well as the lives of the actresses and those of the characters, the competition and the sisterhood, the visible and the invisible.



Saving Zoë
6.2

A year after the murder of her sister Zoë, Echo is determined to uncover the truth. With Zoë's diary as her guide, Echo finds herself pulled into the darkness of her sister's secret life and she uncovers how one small decision can lead to tragic consequences.



Twin Sisters
6.8

1920s Germany. Two sisters aged six years, no sooner see their remaining parent buried when they are torn apart. Lotte goes to live with her upper middle class Dutch aunt in Holland, Anna to work as a farm hand on her German uncle's rural farm. The World War II impacts each of their lives and finally in old age they meet again.



Sentimental Value
7.6

Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star.



Eduardo and Monica
7.7

On an unusual day, a series of coincidences lead Eduardo to meet Monica at a party. A curiosity is aroused between the two and, despite not being alike, they fall madly in love. In 1980s Brasília, their love needs to mature and learn to overcome differences.



The Wolfpack
6.771

Locked away from society in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Angulo brothers learn about the outside world through the films that they watch. Nicknamed ‘The Wolfpack’, the brothers spend their childhood reenacting their favorite films using elaborate home-made props and costumes. Their world is shaken up when one of the brothers escapes and everything changes.



My Grandfather's Demons

Rosa's life, a highly valued professional, is turned upside down when her grandfather Marcelino dies.



Little Sister
6.043

After returning to her childhood home, young nun Colleen finds her old room exactly how she left it: painted black and covered in goth and metal posters. Her parents are happy enough to see her, but her brother is living as a recluse in the guesthouse since returning home from the Iraq war.



Mother
Mother(2019)
6.73

Ten years have gone by since Elena's six-year old son has disappeared. The last thing she heard of him was a phone call he gave her, saying that he was lost on a beach in France and couldn't find his father. Nowadays, Elena lives on this same beach and manages a restaurant. She is finally beginning to emerge from this tragic episode when she meets a French teenager who strongly reminds her of her lost son. The two of them will embark on a relationship which will sow chaos and distrust around them.



ID:A
ID:A(2011)
6

A woman wakes up in a river. Wounded and without memory, then races to elude mysterious followers and recover from amnesia.



Insensate
Insensate(2021)
6.7

A woman tries to help her twin sister, with whom she has a strong connection, recover from a trauma. But weird things surround their lives.



Just Like Our Parents
7.143

Rosa is in her late 30s, a child of the 1970s with divorced parents. She lives with her own family in São Paulo. Overwhelmed by an eruption of individual passions, lies and the expectations of three generations, she tries to discover who she really is.



From Beginning to End
6.622

Two brothers develop a very close relationship as they are growing up in an idyllic and happy family. When they are young adults their relationship becomes very intimate, romantic, and sexual.



Invisible Life
7.8

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1950. In the conservative home of the Gusmão family, Eurídice and Guida are two inseparable sisters who support each other. While Guida can share with her younger sister the details of her romantic adventures, Eurídice finds in her older sister the encouragement she needs to pursue her dream of becoming a professional pianist.



Gloria Bell
5.965

Gloria is a free-spirited divorcée who spends her days at a straight-laced office job and her nights on the dance floor, joyfully letting loose at clubs around Los Angeles. After meeting Arnold on a night out, she finds herself thrust into an unexpected new romance, filled with both the joys of budding love and the complications of dating, identity, and family.



Four Daughters
7.4

Between light and darkness stands Olfa, a Tunisian woman and the mother of four daughters. One day, her two older daughters disappear. To fill in their absence, the filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania invites professional actresses and invents a unique cinema experience that will lift the veil on Olfa and her daughters' life stories. An intimate journey of hope, rebellion, violence, transmission and sisterhood that will question the very foundations of our societies.



Sister of Mine
5.213

Oliver, a young film director, discovers on a porn Web site one night that the protagonist of one of the erotic videos is his younger half-sister Aurora. In the process of finding out what she was doing there, Oliver will become fascinated by his sister.



Tabu
Tabu(2012)
7.017

Lisbon, Portugal, 2010. Pilar, a pious woman devoted to social causes, maintains a peculiar relationship with her neighbor Aurora, a temperamental old woman obsessed with gambling who lives tormented by a mysterious past.



The Quietude
6.1

Against the backdrop of a military dictatorship, Eugenia is reunited with her estranged family following her father’s stroke and is forced to confront dark secret.



Pola X
Pola X(1999)
5.4

A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.



Sister
Sister(2018)
7.3

A man remembers his childhood memory of growing up with an annoying little sister in 1990s China. How would his life have been if things had gone differently?



The Second Mother
8.031

After leaving her daughter Jessica in a small town in Pernambuco to be raised by relatives, Val spends the next 13 years working as a nanny to Fabinho in São Paulo. She has financial stability but has to live with the guilt of having not raised Jessica herself. As Fabinho’s university entrance exams approach, Jessica reappears in her life and seems to want to give her mother a second chance. However, Jessica has not been raised to be a servant and her very existence will turn Val’s routine on its head. With precision and humour, the subtle and powerful forces that keep rigid class structures in place and how the youth may just be the ones to shake it all up.



Nine and a Half Moons
6.022

Two contrasting visions of life: on the one hand, the "rock" and adventurous of the brave Livia, cellist without maternal instinct; on the other hand, the reassuring routine of his sister Tina, shy urban vigilant with an ardent desire for maternity.



Millennium Actress
7.8

Documentary filmmaker Genya Tachibana has tracked down the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, who mysteriously vanished at the height of her career. When he presents her with a key she had lost and thought was gone forever, the filmmaker could not have imagined that it would not only unlock the long-held secrets of Chiyoko’s life... but also his own.



Life Itself
7.198

As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.



Stories We Tell
7.1

Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley investigates certain secrets related to her mother, interviewing a group of family members and friends whose reliability varies depending of their implication in the events, which are remembered in different ways; so a trail of questions remains to be answered, because memory is always changing and the discovery of truth often depends on who is telling the tale.



Identifying Features

Magdalena makes a journey to find her son, who has disappeared on his way to the Mexican border with the United States. Her odyssey takes her to meet Miguel, a man recently deported from the US. They start to travel together, Magdalena looking for her son, and Miguel hoping to see his mother again.



Past Lives
7.718

After decades apart, childhood friends Nora and Hae Sung are reunited in New York for one fateful weekend as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.



Viral
Viral(2016)
5.649

Following the outbreak of a virus that wipes out the majority of the human population, a young woman documents her family's new life in quarantine and tries to protect her infected sister.



Caracas
Caracas(2024)
6

A well-known Neapolitan writer returns to his hometown after a long absence and encounters an old friend known as Caracas. Caracas, once a neo-fascist skinhead, is now converting to Islam.



My Skinny Sister
6.9

Just as Stella enters the exciting world of adolescence she discovers that her big sister and role model Katja is hiding an eating disorder. The disease slowly tears the family apart. A story about jealousy, love and betrayal told with warmth, depth and laughter - on and off the ice.



Cries and Whispers
7.9

As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.



Julieta
Julieta(2016)
6.982

The film spans 30 years in Julieta’s life from a nostalgic 1985 where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness.



Central Station
8.1

An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.



Poetry
Poetry(2010)
7.555

A South Korean woman in her sixties enrolls in a poetry class as she grapples with her faltering memory and her grandson's appalling wrongdoing.



The Past
The Past(2013)
7.2

After four years apart, Ahmad returns to his wife Marie in Paris in order to progress their divorce. During his brief stay, he cannot help noticing the strained relationship between Marie and her daughter Lucie. As he attempts to improve matters between mother and daughter Ahmad unwittingly lifts the lid on a long buried secret...



Clandestine Childhood

Juan lives in clandestinity. Just like his mum, his dad and his adored uncle Beto, outside his home he has another name. At school, Juan is known as Ernesto. And he meets María, who only has one name. Based on true events, set in the Argentina of 1979, this film is one about love.



Chaotic Ana
5.977

Ana, a teenager artist, is raised in Ibiza by her German father Klaus in a naturalist lifestyle. She meets Justine, who invites her to move to Madrid and get an artistic education and financial support. Ana befriends Linda, meets the problematic Said, a Saharawi youngster, and later she is hypnotized by Anglo, who opens a door to her memories and past lives.



Melancholia
7.2

Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.



Whisper If I Forget

An old pop singer who has Alzheimer's returns to her old house where she remembers her old days of climbing the stairs of fame and fortune while trying to deal with her older sister who holds her responsible for her ruined life.



Amanda
Amanda(2022)
6.43

Amanda, 24, lives mostly isolated and has never had any friends, even if it's the thing she wants the most. Amanda chooses her new mission as to convince her childhood friend to believe that they are still best friends.



Elena
Elena(2011)
7.198

After suffering from a heart attack, a wealthy elderly Russian man plans to will most of his estate to his estranged daughter, but his titular wife has other plans.



Amer
Amer(2009)
6.207

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.



Anita B.
Anita B.(2014)
5.5

After World War II, Anita, a young survivor of Auschwitz, becomes involved in an intense and passionate affair that almost shatters her until she gains the strength to start a new life.



Hannah and Her Sisters

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.



The Forbidden City
7.081

In the suburbs of Rome two very different souls intersect. One is the son of a restaurant owner who disappeared with his lover. The other is a young mysterious woman who has arrived from China in search of her missing sister.



Tattoo
Tattoo(2013)
7.5

Paulete, the star of a daring theater group, is visited by his military brother-in-law, the young Fininha. A torrid relationship arises between the two, and now the soldier must deal with the prevailing repression during the Brazilian military dictatorship.



Memory
Memory(2023)
7.068

Sylvia is a social worker who leads a simple and structured life: her daughter, her job, her AA meetings. This is blown open when Saul follows her home from their high school reunion. Their surprise encounter will profoundly impact both of them as they open the door to the past.



Nostalgia
Nostalgia(1983)
7.8

A Russian poet, Andrei and his interpreter, Eugenia travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.



Sisters
Sisters(2001)
6.9

A movie about two sisters - thirteen year old Sveta, poor and abandoned by her father, who longs to go off and be a sniper in the army, and spoilt eight-year old Dina, doted on by her gangster father...



Twinsters
Twinsters(2015)
7.327

Adopted from South Korea, raised on different continents & connected through social media, Samantha & Anaïs believe that they are twin sisters separated at birth.



The Staggering Girl

Francesca, an Italian-American writer who lives in New York, must return to Rome to retrieve her aging mother. There, the ghosts of her childhood will come to her through her mother's art.



Tiny Furniture
5.641

After graduating from film school, Aura returns to New York to live with her photographer mother, Siri, and her sister, Nadine, who has just finished high school. Aura is directionless and wonders where to go next in her career and her life. She takes a job in a restaurant and tries unsuccessfully to develop relationships with men, including Keith, a chef where she works, and cult Internet star Jed.



My Mother
My Mother(2015)
6.6

Margherita, a director in the middle of an existential crisis, has to deal with the inevitable and still unacceptable loss of her mother.



Our Little Sister
7.6

After the death of their estranged father, 3 adult sisters invite their teenaged half-sister to live with them.



I'm Still Here
7.938

A woman married to a former politician during the 1971 military dictatorship in Brazil is forced to reinvent herself and chart a new course for her family after a violent and arbitrary act.



The Other Way Around

After 15 years as a couple, Ale and Alex decide to throw a party to celebrate their separation, leaving their loved ones perplexed.



Double Dad
6.7

While her mom is away, a teen sneaks out of the hippie commune where she lives and embarks on a life-changing adventure to discover who her father is.



Woman of My Life
5.5

Longtime Italian cinema star Stefania Sandrelli (The First Beautiful Thing) is Alba, the mother of two very different adult sons. While Giorgio is a playboy who constantly cheats on his wife, Leonardo (Luca Argentero, Eat Pray Love) is always unlucky in love. When Leonardo finally meets the woman of his dreams, Sara, he brings her home to meet the family, but it appears this is not the first time that Sara has met Giorgio. Directed by Luca Lucini and stars Luca Argentero, Alessandro Gassman and Stefania Sandrelli.



Orphan
Orphan(2017)
5.4

A young woman moves to Paris and has a brush with disaster. Grown-up at last, an accomplished woman thought she was safe from her own past. Gradually, these characters come together to form a single heroine.



Cria!
Cria!(1976)
7.5

Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.



Estranged
Estranged(2015)
5.3

Due to a near-fatal accident that has left her incapacitated and depleted of her long-term memory, a temporarily wheelchair-bound woman returns home after being abroad for six years accompanied by her bohemian boyfriend, the apparent cause of the accident. Unable to remember her family or her own childhood, she sets out, with the help of her boyfriend, to find the reason for her leaving all those years ago and quickly discovers her relatives may not be as loving as she’d thought



Identification of a Woman

Movie director Niccolò has just been left by his wife. Subsequently he embarks on an obsessive relationship with a young woman who eventually leaves him and disappears while searching for her, he meets a variety of other willing girls. This gives him the idea of making a movie about women's relationships. He starts to search for a woman who can play the leading part in the movie.



Sisters
Sisters(2015)
6

Two disconnected sisters are summoned to clean out their childhood bedrooms before their parents sell their family home.



Waves
Waves(2024)
7.451

At the end of the 1960s, when the air is filled with rock-and-roll and student rebellions are changing the world, the older of two brothers joins a prestigious newsroom of the public radio broadcaster. Not long after, he finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conflict between journalists and the secret service.



Sisters
Sisters(2006)
3.865

A reporter witnesses a brutal murder and becomes entangled in a mystery involving a pair of twins.



Between Us
6.3

A group of literature-loving friends bury letters to be opened 10 years later when they will confront the dreams of their youth with what the future has held in store for them.



Girlfriends
6.6

A photographer and her best friend are roommates. She is stuck with small-change shooting jobs and dreams of success. When her roommate decides to get married and leave, she feels hurt and has to learn how to deal with living alone.



Ramen Shop
6.9

Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. When he finds his late mother's journal after the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, he takes it with him to her native country, Singapore, hoping to piece together the story of his family and his life.



Clip
Clip(2012)
5.4

Jasna, a beautiful teenager, leads a crude life in post-war Serbia. She goes on a spree of sex, drugs and partying until she finds love and tenderness in a harsh environment.



Don't Blame Karma!
6.9

The travails of Sara, a frustrated fashion designer who blames karma for her bad luck. Fate will put her face to face with her sister, Lucy, who enjoys very different luck, and in a series of events and reunions that will lead her to make a radical decision.



Adulthood
Adulthood(2025)
6.017

The lives of two siblings are completely upended when they discover a dead body, long buried in their parent’s basement, sending them down a rabbit hole of crime and murder.



A Tale of Two Sisters

Two sisters return home after a stay in a mental institution, only to face disturbing events and a strained relationship with their stepmother. As eerie occurrences unfold, dark family secrets begin to surface, blurring the line between reality and nightmare.



House
House(1977)
7.315

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip with her friends to visit her aunt's ancestral house in the countryside. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.



No Filter
No Filter(2016)
5.8

When a woman visits a Chinese doctor, she discovers her pain is due to pent-up rage, and the only cure is to fully express herself, whatever may come.



Summer in Berlin
6.2

An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.



El Norte
El Norte(1983)
7.1

Brother and sister Enrique and Rosa flee persecution at home in Guatemala and journey north, through Mexico and on to the United States, with the dream of starting a new life.



Vampire Sisters
6.7

Keeping secrets can be difficult, especially when you’re a twelve-year-old half-vampire moving from Transylvania to a new life in Germany. Going to school, making new friends and fitting in — it’s all tough when you can’t just be yourself. With a vampire father and a human mother, sisters Dakaria (Daka) and Silvania don’t live in your typical blended family. Each girl embraces a different side of her genetic makeup: Daka wishes she was 100% vampire; Silvania wishes she was 100% human; and both believe they can finally realize their hearts’ desires when the opportunity to change presents itself. Will Daka and Silvania realize that, sometimes, your uniqueness is your greatest strength?



Home Movie
4.875

Reverend David Poe and his psychiatrist wife trade hectic New York life for an idyllic rural farmhouse; the perfect place for 10 year old twins Jack & Emily to run, play and imagine. Documenting this lifestyle change, David decides to film every holiday and special family event. To the Poe's horror their home movies reveal an increasing malice and evil within their children.



DNA
DNA(2020)
5.9

A woman has a close bond with her beloved Algeriann grandfather, who protected her from a toxic home life as a child; his death triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate, revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.



Room in Rome
6.4

A hotel room in the center of Rome serves as the setting for Alba and Natasha, two sexy and recently acquainted women, to have a physical adventure that touches their very souls.



An American Rhapsody

A Hungarian family forced to flee the Communist country for the United States must leave a young daughter behind. Six years later, the family arranges to bring the absent daughter to the United States where she has trouble adjusting. The daughter then decides to travel to Budapest to discover her identity.



Revoir Paris
7.081

Three months after surviving a terrorist attack in a bistro, Mia is still traumatized and unable to recall the events of that night. In an effort to move forward, she investigates her memories and retraces her steps.

AboutPrivacy PolicyTerms of ServiceContact Us