Walter Salles’ latest Oscar-winning film, I’m Still Here, covers events that took place over half a century ago during Brazil’s military dictatorship of the 1970s, specifically the 1971 arrest, forced disappearance, torture, and killing of Rubens Paiva, a Brazilian engineer turned politician who objected to the military dictatorship. His wife Eunice and 15-year-old daughter Eliana were also held.
It is one of the most compelling cinematic works of recent years, exploring the biting realities of the Cold War era—a time when arresting, torturing, and killing of political dissidents and their families in Latin America was a common practice carried out under the supervision of US intelligence agencies in the name of fighting communism.
One of the most striking scenes shows Eunice happy with her family and government officials in 1996 after finally obtaining her husband's death certificate. This not only gives her closure but also serves justice to the disappeared and frees families from the torment of not knowing the fates of their missing loved ones.
When a journalist asks Eunice why she keeps pursuing this past event rather than focusing on the present, she responds that without addressing injustices, societies cannot truly heal, nor can justice be fully realised. This would let history repeat itself.
In another poignant scene, Eunice recalls the context of a family photo, possibly the last taken before her husband's forced disappearance. Captured on a beach during a farewell gathering for their eldest daughter before she left to study in London, the memory of that moment had faded over time.
Only after years of struggling to uncover the truth about her husband's fate does Eunice turn the photograph over and write an accurate description of the occasion. This is symbolic. It shows that the image can now be placed where it truly belongs: in memory.
A memory cannot be consigned to the past if a dark stain still ties it to the present. The photograph, then, does not evoke nostalgia for a bygone era but rather serves as a painful reminder of the impossibility of fully living in the present—because the past has not yet become the past. Instead, it lingers, extending into the present as an unhealed wound that continues to afflict those who remain.
The Piava family
The screenplay, written by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, is based on the memoirs of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the family's only son, under the same title. Walter Salles, known for Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries, revisits Rio De Janeiro and a period he personally relates to. Aged 13, he was a close friend of the five Paiva children and frequently visited their home, just a few metres from the beach.
Their household, enriched with intellectual, artistic, and political discussions, felt like an isolated island as Brazil swiftly descended into military rule. Perhaps this personal connection is what gives the first third of the film its warmth and intimacy, each scene radiating a sense of familiarity and emotional depth.
The true purpose of this atmosphere—crafted with intense vitality through Adrian Tejedo's cinematography and Warren Ellis's evocative soundtrack—is not merely to reconstruct the past but rather to immerse the viewer in the vivid, colourful world of the Paiva family in stark contrast to the dark, chaotic, and sorrowful reality that engulfs the family when Ruben is arrested for helping the families of political exiles.
In political discourse, people can forget that victims are individuals. Too often, they are reduced to symbols or icons, defined solely by their suffering and the violations committed against them, the Gaza war being a case in point. Activists and artists work tirelessly to remind the world that the victims are not just numbers—they were people, with lives, families, personalities, and histories.
Layers of suffering
By deeply exploring the layers of suffering endured by a single family, Salles effectively conveys the scale of a tragedy that affected (and still affects) entire communities. Showing the devastation of one can be as powerful as showing the destruction of a group. The loss of one family home can carry the same emotional and symbolic weight as the ruin of an entire city.
The heart of I'm Still Here rests on the shoulders of Fernanda Torres, who delivers a masterful performance as a wife whose life is upended. While she fights to uncover the fate of her husband, she must also shield her family from disintegration, ensuring that the tragedy that befell him does not destroy her children's future.
Torres' portrayal, which rightfully earned her the Golden Globe for Best Actress (she was overlooked at the Oscars), is built on a profound understanding of her character. She is no Hollywood heroine, and this is no fairy tale of triumph. It is a story of endurance, a walk along the edge of catastrophe.
From the opening scene—Eunice Paiva swimming in the sea as a military helicopter hovers ominously overhead—the viewer immediately senses the fragile landscape upon which this tragedy unfolds. Later, when security forces storm their home, arrest the father and detain the family for hours while he is interrogated, that helicopter no longer seems like just a distant threat—it has invaded their reality.
The paradise the family once knew is gone forever, leaving Eunice to navigate the deep waters of dictatorship, desperately struggling to keep herself and her family from drowning.
Brilliant direction and acting
Those who have experienced political detention, even for just a few hours, will recognise the brilliance of Salles and Torres in making this ordeal feel tangible, from her isolation alone in a cell with a small window to the repetitive interrogations, the same question getting asked over and over, her captors seemingly wanting different answers.
The scale is illustrated through screaming, torture, or nightmarish scenes but rather by its overwhelming ordinariness. There are no dark, ominous dungeons, just the ordinary confines of a military barracks—a reminder that systematic cruelty can be carried out simply because someone decides they can strip others of their freedom.
