As published on Caderno B+

It is difficult to imagine that there is still an Elis Regina left to discover. Her voice, her albums, her interviews, her historic encounters and even her contradictions have been revisited so many times that it can feel as though we already know everything about one of the most important artists in Brazilian music. Elis & Eu begins precisely with what remained outside that record: not so much the singer Brazil knows, but the woman who existed when the stage disappeared.

Directed by André Bushatsky, the documentary premieres on August 25 on Universal+ and was inspired by Elis e Eu: 11 anos, 6 meses e 19 dias com minha mãe (Elis and Me: 11 Years, 6 Months and 19 Days with My Mother), by João Marcello Bôscoli. The production combines rare archival footage, dramatizations and interviews with people who shared different moments of Elis’s life, including Wanderléa, João Bosco and César Camargo Mariano, while also recovering recordings featuring Rita Lee, Tom Jobim, Milton Nascimento and Ronaldo Bôscoli.

There is, however, an important distinction João Marcello is keen to make: he did not make the documentary. Bushatsky read his book, approached him and decided to turn those memories into a film. João did not participate in the screenplay, the selection of interviewees or the artistic decisions, and only saw the documentary once it was finished.

“My contribution was writing the book,” he says. That distance ultimately made the experience even more unexpected. Memories that had existed for decades only inside his head suddenly acquired a visual representation. There is no footage, for example, of his mother finding him on the beach, or of the episode in which, after stealing Elis’s wallet, he was thrown out of the house and ended up living for a while in a small tent. Seeing something inspired by those memories transformed into cinema was, he says, profoundly moving.

The film also added stories that even João Marcello did not know. He mentions Wanderléa’s testimony, which helped reorganize scattered childhood memories, as well as accounts connected to moments in Elis’s musical career that expanded his own understanding of her story. It is precisely this accumulation of perspectives that allows the documentary to move beyond the book without trying to replace it.

But what interests João most is what this combination reveals about his mother. Elis Regina was extensively documented as an artist. There are interviews, performances, photographs, recordings and accounts enough to reconstruct almost every stage of her career. Inside the home, however, there is far less documentation.

And that difference matters because, for João Marcello, domestic life was not separate from the artist. It was part of what nourished her creativity.

According to him, Elis liked the term “housewife.” During one period, despite having the financial means to employ permanent household help, she spent months personally taking care of the house in Serra da Cantareira: doing laundry, cleaning and immersing herself in the domestic routine. Looking back, João does not see this as an interruption of her career, but almost as a form of retreat.

“The artist feeds on the person as a whole. Elis is a person, she is a mother, she is a friend, she has her work and she has her public face. That public face is what is best known,” he explains. The opposition between the great professional and the woman taking care of her home, therefore, perhaps says more about the way we tend to look at extraordinary women than it does about Elis. For her, apparently, one dimension nourished the other.

There is also an Elis whom João Marcello particularly wants to preserve: the woman who was strong without strength necessarily meaning harshness.

He remembers moments when his mother discovered that friends were facing financial difficulties and helped them without turning the gesture into a story to be told. He recalls an episode described by Aldir Blanc, when Elis, shortly before performing in a large arena — at a moment when all her attention might naturally have been focused on the concert — still found time to stop at the hospital, visit the songwriter’s mother, sing and pray with her. As an adult, João heard another story from Lenine: while in Recife, Elis gathered songwriters together to speak to them about the importance of protecting their rights.

They are small stories when compared with the public scale of her career, but perhaps that is precisely why they are so revealing.

João grew up in a house where, as he describes it, “all the power was in Elis’s hands.” And the lesson he took from that experience was not to associate power with violence or oppression. His mother could be firm, strict, organized, swear freely and disconcert anyone around her, but she was also capable of enormous and unexpected gestures of affection.

He found an especially beautiful expression for that combination: “a warm strength.”

“I realized that you don’t necessarily have to be strong in a way that hurts the people around you,” he says. During his childhood, her strength was so overwhelming that it also became a source of protection. João recalls that even when he saw Elis being carried out of the house unconscious on the day she died, his first reaction was to believe that nothing could happen to her. “Elis Regina doesn’t die,” he thought. The later realization that not even that immense force could make her invulnerable remains one of the most painful memories he carries.

Perhaps that is why, so many years later, the concern with his mother’s permanence remains so present. João Marcello admits that one of his fears has always been that Elis might somehow be forgotten. The documentary, like the book, becomes another part of that transmission of memory — now reaching audiences who did not live through her era.

And he is especially enthusiastic when artists from much younger generations discover her work. During the conversation, the recent tribute by Rosalía is greeted with almost childlike excitement. For João, every international artist who mentions or sings his mother represents the possibility that her voice might cross another border and find another generation.

“Elis Regina is one of the last jewels in music still waiting to be discovered by the world. And she will be, at some point,” he says.

After so many versions of Elis — the revolutionary interpreter, the television star, the politically restless artist, Tom Jobim’s partner, the voice that could transform a song from the instant she began to sing it — Elis & Eu proposes adding another without diminishing any of the others.

The mother. The friend. The woman who wrote letters, protected songwriters, cleaned her own house, looked after the people she loved and then walked onto the stage.

Perhaps it is not exactly a new Elis. It is simply the part of her the public has had fewer opportunities to know.

Elis & Eu premieres on August 25, exclusively on Universal+, available through Prime Video, Claro TV+, Vivo TV, Meli+ and UOL Play.