¿Dónde está Elisa? is a Chilean thriller television soap opera, that first appeared on television on April 21 of 2009 in TVN. It is written by Pablo Illanes, with scripts from Pablo Illanes, Nona Fernández, Hugo Morales and Josefina Fernández and is directed by María Eugenia Rencoret. In 2010, the telenovela was remade by the Telemundo network in the US, aTV in Turkey entitled Kızım Nerede? and MD Entertainment in Indonesia which is titled Di Mana Melani. In the Philippines, ABS-CBN is doing a remake entitled Nasaan Ka, Elisa?. The story involves the events of the disappearance of Elisa, one of the daughters of the couple formed by Raimundo Domínguez and Francisca Correa, who after 17 years of marriage become so desperate that their own marriage is in danger. Inspiration of the story comes from the real life drama involving vanished British native Madeleine McCann in Portugal. However, unlike the McCann story, the soap opera features a teenager who disappears and not a small child. The disappearance in a local club makes the story very similar to that of Jorge Matute Johns, a Chilean youngster who disappeared and was never seen again after leaving a party at a local disco. The list of suspects is long and includes family members, fellow students, and friends of the teenager who frequented the same places that she did prior to her disappearance. Production began on August 14, 2008. The first infomercial or preview of the production was shown on Friday, March 13, 2009.
Plot
The lives of the Altamira family will change forever based on the events surrounding the disappearance of Elisa, one of the daughters of the marriage of Raimundo Domínguez and Francisca Correa. Once she disappears, we begin to learn the secrets of every member of the family as well as those of her friends. Paranoia sets in, the past is dragged up, matters that were supposed to be buried reappear and recriminations among family members start. All these events lead to a long list of suspects, among them family members, fellow students, former employees of the Domínguez family and several friends who used to frequent the same places she did prior to her disappearance.
The role of Francisco Reyes was originally to be played by Julio Milostich, but after the scandal that he was involved with, casting came up with people like Luciano Cruz-Coke, Bastián Bodenhöfer and Reyes himself; the first one had a contract with Roos Film and the second one with Canal 13. Finally the role went to Reyes, who had expressed a really great attitude in participating in a late evening production from TVN.
The first few episodes were transmitted between the end of the News and the beginning of the weather reports.
In the Facebook-like page that Elisa was using, her mother tells authorities that a message appeared, this denotes two errors; first, no anonymous messages can be received on this site, since only registered users can send and receive messages; secondly, the message was sent by Elisa's profile itself, which means that she sent the message or somebody that knew her password.
The supposed message from the "Facebook" account was sent with an IP address that starts with 68.xxx.xxx.xxx, while in Chile one could only use the format 200.xxx.xxx.xxx.
The search engine that Francisca Correa was using, called "Search", utilizes the same format as Google.
In the telenovela's debut, two episodes were transmitted back to back without commercial interruption.
The newspaper called "El ciudadano", utilizes the same format as La Tercera.
Starting on Monday, July 20, the slogan of the telenovela will be changed from "A todos nos puede pasar" to "Mirando a través del mal", this is because starting on episode 52 transmitted on the same day, the audience will know who the kidnapper is.
