Born and raised in Brasília, Brazil, Elisa Souza is a Los Angeles-based cinematographer shooting narrative, documentary, music videos and commercials, dividing her time between work in both countries.

 

Having grown up surrounded by modernist architecture in a visually unique city, Elisa has always been in love with photography, music, fashion and movies. She is a collaborator with a focus on stories, who particularly loves to work on projects that feature sensitive, diverse narratives across film and digital formats. Often using framing, color, texture and movement as essential parts of visual storytelling, her work aims to evoke emotions, connecting the characters and the audience.

 

Her films include Ritmo (LOLA award winner at the Philadelphia Latino Arts & Film Festival, Light Iron post-production color grading grant recipient, Best Cinematography at the Fox International Film Festival), Crackland, a documentary shot in São Paulo, Vancouver, New York, Zurich and Oslo, which premiered at the São Paulo International Film Festival and got distribution through O2 Play, and Malu and the Machine, a film sponsored by the National Cinema Agency (Ancine) and the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, screened at the Brasília Film Festival. She also lensed Mundo de Papel and Cultivar, music videos for Zeeba (BMG), and has a background in camera crews for films and television such as Desires of the Flesh, screened at Sundance, and Bela Raízes, available to watch on Amazon Prime.

 

Elisa is a graduate from the Cinematography MFA at the American Film Institute and the Communication BA at the University of Brasília, as well as a fluent English and Portuguese/intermediate Spanish and French speaker. She is also a member of the Brazilian Society of Cinematographers (ABC) and the Brazilian Collective of Women and Transgender People in Cinematography (DAFB) and a recent fellow from Film Independent’s Project Involve, sponsored by Panavision and Picture Shop.