Senna is a 2010 British-French documentary film by the very talented director Asif Kapadia depicting the life and death of Brazilian Formula One Race Driver Ayrton Senna. It focues on his career in Racing from 1984 until his death in 1994.
It is the first film in Kapadia’s excellent documentary trilogy about young prodigies rising to extreme heights in their life and finding an tragic end. The other two films are “Amy” (2015) about the life of singer Amy Whinehouse and “Diego Maradona” (2019) and is impressive career in soccer. Like those two Senna also relies on the use of archival footage of race tracks and interviews and home videos by his family and features no retrospective interviews or additional narration.
The montage of the footage and sound is superb and with it’s clear and strong stylistic choices makes for an impressive portrait of this young man’s life.
Here are also the trailers for the other two films by Kapadia, which are equally great: