Senna

Senna, Asif Kapadia’s documentary biography of the Brazilian race car driver Ayrton Senna, a three-time Formula One world champion, virtually puts you in the lap of its subject as he hurtles like a speeding bullet along the fastest tracks. The film is two things: a discreet hagiography of the handsome, soft-spoken Senna, who was only 34 when he died in a 1994 crash at the San Marino Grand Prix in Italy, and a compressed, esoteric slice of Formula One history during his 10-year ascendance. The documentary weaves off-screen interviews into a streamlined voice-over narrative, while the camera rarely strays from the racetrack. Compiled from thousands of hours of footage, much of it from the Formula One archive, the film is a considerable feat of editing. The racing segments, consisting mostly of television clips and footage from mini-cams attached to cars, is frequently heart-stopping, despite its low resolution. The film resurrects several notable crashes, some fatal, others not.

The film won a BAFTA Film Award in 2012 for Best Documentary Film and Best Editing, the British Independent Film Award for Best Documentary in 2011, the Audience Award for Best Film at the Ghent International Film Festival (2011), the Outstanding Documentary Editing Award by the International Documentary Association (2011), the Audience Award for Best International Feature at the Los Angeles Film Festival (2011), the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival (2011), and the Most Popular Documentary Prize at the Melbourne International Film Festival (2011).

Cast:
Ayrton Senna
Alain Prost
Frank Williams
Ron Dennis

Director: Asif Kapadia
Writer: Manish Pandey
Runtime: 106 min
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Sport
Language: English, Portuguese, French, Japanese
Production Year: 2010

The screening is part of the 9th Brazilian Film Festival