#heitor lorega

[whileiamdying]

‘I’m Still Here’ became unexpectedly timely with Brazil’s rightward shift

In Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here,” the lives of a Brazilian family are torn apart when the father goes missing under a military dictatorship. (Alile Onawale/Sony Pictures Classics)

By Gregory Ellwood Dec. 4, 2024 3 AM PT

When Walter Salles first read the novel “I’m Still Here,” written by his childhood friend Marcelo Rubens Paiva, it took him back to his adolescence. A time when Brazil hadn’t completely lost its innocence. In 1969, after spending five years abroad, Salles and his family returned to Rio de Janeiro. Then 13, he became friends with the Paiva family’s five children. And although the country was under military dictatorship, the Paiva home, in walking distance of a paradisiacal beach, was something of a sanctuary.

“We all gravitated to that house because it was the reverse angle of what was happening in Brazil at that time,” Salles recalls. “There was free speech; we could talk about absolutely everything. Music that was censored on the radio was playing all the time on their record player. You could enter a political discussion with the parents, and then you could talk about music and whatever was happening at that time — a fascinating time because the world was being redefined at that point, and Brazil was in the opposite direction. So, somehow that house and that family was a microcosm of a country we all kind of wanted to live in.”

As depicted in Salles’ eventual film of the same title, the patriarch of the family, former Congressman Rubens Paiva, was arrested and taken in for questioning on Jan. 20, 1971. He was never seen alive again. It took his wife, Eunice Paiva, primarily portrayed by Fernanda Torres in the film, more than two decades to have his death officially recognized by a Brazilian government intent on moving forward.

“As we were developing [the movie], the zeitgeist changed completely, and we were faced with the rise of the extreme right-wing in Brazil,” Salles says. “And their discourse was, ‘Let’s go back to a wonderful time of the military dictatorship.’ And there we were suddenly realizing that we were making, yes, a film about our past, but at the same time we were making a film about the present — what we were experiencing in every discussion on every street corner.”

It took Salles and his creative partners seven years and at least 28 versions of the script before they were confident to begin production. The film eventually premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival and was selected as Brazil’s international feature Oscar submission. Salles immediately informs the viewer of the political context of the story: The menacing threat of the authoritarian regime is there in the very first image, a shot of a woman, Eunice Paiva, swimming in the ocean.

“It could be paradise, but then there’s a military helicopter flying over her, and that helicopter is menacingly low, and it shouldn’t be,” Salles says. “So, there’s something from the very beginning that is kind of destabilizing and that somehow echoes through the first 30 minutes of the film here and there. That scene for us was always a little equivalent of a Greek omen at the beginning of an Aeschylus tragedy. The birds, the vultures are circling.”

Fernanda Torres stars in “I’m Still Here,” based on a the story of a Brazilian family that director Walter Salles knew growing up. (Alile Onawale/Sony Pictures Classics)

Salles lost touch with the Paivas after they left Rio in the early 1970s. Marcello’s novel triggered a desire for Salles to revisit that era — in this case, with the story of a broken family and a matriarch who had to reinvent herself to give her children any sort of future. The filmmaker calls it a “microcosm of humanity during a time of turmoil.” And, along with his celebrated films such as “Central Station” and “The Motorcycle Diaries,” it was another opportunity to share the collective journey of a country through the individual stories of its people.

“I didn’t know all the layers of the story, and I didn’t know the extent to which this woman had managed to reinvent herself, had somehow found manners to erode an autocratic government using very specific weapons,” Salles says. “So, the book was fundamental in allowing me in. And then the whole family was very supportive during those years and sent so much information, so many photographs. And this is what allowed me metaphorically to reopen that house. I felt invited to reopen that house.”

Along with screenwriters Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, Salles embraced the fact that Eunice Paiva was a woman full of steely resolve but also internal contradictions. She never allowed herself or her family to be photographed by the government without a smile. She never allowed the government or the press to see her children crying.

“This is a woman who was fueled by extraordinary inner strength, who also could say words that were very poignant and, at the same time, appear to be restrained,” Salles notes. “She’s like a volcano that is always near eruption but actually does not erupt. There’s always something bubbling inside of her that she somehow restrained. There’s something really extraordinary and heroic in her confrontation with that regime. But on the other hand, it was so tough for her kids to actually have a mother who never truly shared what happened to their father. She never articulated that in a clear manner, thus depriving them of the possibility to get to closure on that.

“As Fernanda Torres says, ‘In tragedy, you don’t cry; you have to confront, you take in and then you react.’ And this is what she did. And with an extraordinary inner strength, but a great ambivalence as well.”

[randomrichards]

I’M STILL HERE (2024):

Family’s lives changed

Husband taken by army

Mother’s hidden strength

[milliondollarbaby87]

I'm Still Here (2024) Review

Eunice Paiva must attempt to project her family when her husband Rubens is taken during the tightening grup of military dictatorship in Brazil 1971. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Continue reading I’m Still Here (2024) Review

[50books50movies]

I'm Still Here

I did not realize that this was a biopic, so the revelation that this was adapted from the son's biography felt like a finishing blow after the emotional punches, from the last, longing look at the house to the shot of a housekeeper silently packing up her belongings. Once you know that it's a biopic, you can see the biopic structure, but when it's this well done, you can forgive it for playing to form. 

It made me think of Roma, one of my favorite films, which is about as high a compliment as I can give.

[bob-the-movie-man-film-reviews]

I'm Still Here: The Brazilian Oscar Wild-card Deserves It's Place.

A One Mann’s Movies review of “I’m Still Here” (2025). Original title: Ainda Estou Aqui. This film was the big surprise when the Oscar nominations for Best Picture were announced last month. “I’m Still Here” is a Brazilian produced and set film about life under the tyranny of military dictatorship in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1970s. I very much doubt it is going to win that top prize since I…

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

‘I’m Still Here’: A stark history and warm memoir of Brazil’s darkest days

Walter Salles’s “I’m Still Here” is an epic within an epic: a teeming family drama contained within the melodrama of a country going insane.

No, it’s not set in modern-day America. Perhaps that’s the point: If we’re not very careful, it could be.

Brazil in 1970 existed in a state of constant tension, with a military dictatorship installed in a 1964 coup that was overseeing a resurgent economy and the increasingly brutal repression of anyone it saw as stepping out of line. Among the latter was Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a civil engineer and congressman from São Paulo who fled the country when his position was nullified by the dictatorship, but who returned within the year because he couldn’t keep away from his wife and kids.

You can hardly blame him. If you were lucky growing up, you knew one of those big, warm, rambunctious families whose dinner table was always open to strays and whose conversations on art, politics, culture and morality expanded one’s brain and the possibilities of life. (If you were luckier still, it was your family.) The Paivas were one of those special clans, and director Salles was, in his youth, one of the strays at their table, making “I’m Still Here” as much personal memoir as national history.

In Mello’s playing, Rubens is affable, smart and maybe too unconcerned for his personal safety. Or maybe he just doesn’t have the time, since he’s active in labor causes, holds meetings at home, publishes a left-wing newspaper and insists on being a present, loving father to his five children. In this, his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) is his partner and equal.

And then, one day in January 1971, Rubens is taken away for questioning, and “I’m Still Here” depicts the harrowing disorientation of a home invaded by men with guns. Eunice was detained and interrogated for a brief period, as was their adolescent daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski), and the glimpses Salles gives of the junta’s tactics — blood on the floor, screams down the hall — chill them and us to the marrow.

At this point, Eunice comes to the fore as the real hero of “I’m Still Here,” embarking on a relentless course of action to discover her husband’s whereabouts while holding her family together with elegance and grit. That path would eventually take her to a law degree and a national role as an activist pushing for the government’s recognition of those who were “disappeared” during the dictatorship, which ended in 1985. (The script by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega is based on a 2015 memoir by Eunice and Rubens’s only son, Marcelo, a successful Brazilian playwright and screenwriter.)

Continue reading.

[geekpopnews]

"Ainda Estou Aqui" é escolhido como representante brasileiro no Oscar 2025

A Academia Brasileira de Cinema anunciou que Ainda Estou Aqui irá concorrer à indicação de Melhor Filme Estrangeiro no Oscar pelo Brasil. #aindaestouaqui #oscar2025

A Academia Brasileira de Cinema anunciou nesta xxxx (xx), que “Ainda Estou Aqui” irá concorrer à indicação de Melhor Filme Estrangeiro no Oscar pelo Brasil. O filme foi aclamado em sua estreia no Festival de Veneza e venceu a categoria de Melhor Roteiro na premiação. Com direção de Walter Salles (Central do Brasil) e roteiro de Murilo Hauser e Heitor Lorega, o longa é baseado na história real…

[canseideserpop]

Filme brasileiro "Ainda Estou Aqui", de Walter Salles, vence prêmio de Melhor Roteiro em Veneza

O mais recente trabalho do renomado cineasta brasileiro Walter Salles, “Ainda Estou Aqui“, conquistou o prêmio de Melhor Roteiro na 81ª edição do Festival de Veneza.A honraria, conhecida como Golden Osella, foi entregue aos roteiristas Murilo Hauser e Heitor Lorega durante a cerimônia de encerramento no Palazzo del Cinema, no último dia 07 de setembro.Inspirado no livro homônimo de Marcelo Rubens…

[hotnew-pt]

Filme brasileiro Ainda Estou Aqui ganha prêmio de melhor roteiro no Festival de Veneza #ÚltimasNotícias #Brasil

Hot News Por Redação Rádio Pampa | 7 de setembro de 2024 Os brasileiros Murilo Hauser e Heitor Lorega ganharam o prêmio de melhor roteiro por “Ainda Estou Aqui” no Festival de Veneza de 2024. A cerimônia de premiação foi realizada na tarde desse sábado (7), onde a presidente do júri, Isabelle Huppert, anunciou os vencedores da seleção oficial da 81ª edição da mostra. “É uma grande emoção estar…

[whileiamdying]

Review: Fernanda Torres pulls off a miracle of maternal courage in ‘I’m Still Here’

Fernanda Torres in the movie “I’m Still Here.” (Alile Onawale / Sony Pictures Classics)

By Carlos Aguilar Jan. 17, 2025 @ 2:46 PM PT

Soufflé is almost ready at the Paiva household just across the street from the beach in sultry Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From the unmistakably festive atmosphere within the home’s airy rooms, one wouldn’t guess the country is under a ferocious military dictatorship.

That Walter Salles, the acclaimed director of “Central Station” and “The Motorcycle Diaries,” first depicts the tight-knit family of “I’m Still Here” at their most ebullient, before tragedy strikes, pays off dramatic dividends in this remarkably life-affirming drama largely set in 1971 and based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Paiva (the Paivas’ only son). A contender for the upcoming international feature Oscar, “I’m Still Here” brilliantly distills an agonizing chapter of a nation’s recent past into a sophisticated portrait of communal endurance.

Already lauded for her quietly shattering performance with a surprise Golden Globes win (the first Brazilian actress to ever receive the prize), Fernanda Torres portrays Eunice Paiva, a mother of five who is married to former Congressman Rubens Paiva(Selton Mello). We see the pent-up worry on her face signaling incipient danger: Helicopters roam the city while news of kidnapped ambassadors pours from the radio.

Within the walls of the Paiva residence (the film was shot in the actual house that belonged to the family), Salles and his cast of both seasoned and fresh-faced actors create a vibrant, lived-in dynamic radiating with affection and carefree liberty. And because we’ve been so wonderfully immersed in the exuberance they are all about to lose, when the darkness reaches their doorstep, in the form of henchmen who take Rubens in for questioning, the contrast between who they were and who they become feels stark.

By that point, Mello has potently established the fatherly warmth his family will sorely miss. In that absence, memory becomes central to “I’m Still Here.” The narrative is interspersed with home movies shot on a 8 mm camera, immortalizing candid instances of leisure and love, the ones that truly matter. Not only are they indelible in the minds of the Paivas, but they are forever preserved in still photos, in Marcelo Paiva’s writing and now onscreen through Salles’ filmic rendition.

The director and cinematographer Adrian Teijido also make the home a shifting co-star and a physical metaphor for Brazil as a whole. Once a place where friends and family entered through perpetually open doors, the space becomes hermetic and airless when curtains are drawn to hide the men who have come to disrupt this idyllic refuge. Through them, the dictatorship instills fear and distrust to maintain power. Salles communicates the state-sanctioned distress by focusing on the family’s upended quotidian rituals.

Eunice responds by offering these goons lunch — maybe in the hope that their ordeal will end sooner, but also as a statement of the type of person she is even to those who might hurt her. (Eventually, she and one of her daughters are detained and interrogated, then released.) Those seemingly muted details about her rich personality come from Marcelo Paiva’s intimate reminiscences about his mother and the Paivas’ collective experience in the aftermath of Rubens’ disappearance, expertly adapted by screenwriters Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega.

Torres exudes the unflashy fortitude of a woman unable and unwilling to surrender to despair as the days and weeks go by. How can she when she must raise her children and seek justice for her husband, who may still be alive? Imparting masterful restraint, Torres makes Eunice’s few outbursts feel believably contained. As distanced from melodrama as possible, her performance is one of internalized grief.

And yet, in the midst of her hidden mourning, Eunice treats those around her with loving understanding, empathetic to their respective fears and the limitations of what they can do for her. She moves through the world with a humble resolve, unafraid of doing what needs to be done, never dwelling on what could or should have been done. At every turn, we recognize her desire to spare her kids from the sorrow she carries. A guardian of their tender hearts, she can only hide so much in an authoritarian reality.

Even mere moments after receiving crushing news, Eunice musters up a smile for her youngest daughter and the energy to take the whole gang out for ice cream, seeking to regain a semblance of what they used to have. That amalgamation of a graceful pride during a crisis and superhuman determination is crucial to Torres’ embodiment of Eunice’s inner force. And because she’s perceived as nearly unbreakable, when sorrow does slip through her eyes in a lost stare or a weighted silence, Torres’ expression is beautifully gutting.

Acting of this subtle caliber is rarely celebrated, but Torres unassuming turn has proved undeniable to anyone who watches it. For a film like “I’m Still Here” to emerge on the other side of the repressive Jair Bolsonaro presidency and be embraced at home and abroad so earnestly (it’s Brazil’s highest grosser since the pandemic) is testament to Salles’ assured directorial hand that treats the delicate subject matter with the seriousness it merits while highlighting humanity rather than brutality. There’s a striking elegance to his images in how they bring us closer to the people, not the horrors.

When a photographer suggests that the family pose with a somber demeanor for a shot that will be featured in an article about Rubens’ disappearance, Eunice refuses, instructing her children to smile broadly. Joy proves defiant to the shadowy oppressors who wish to see their “enemies” suffer. Eunice’s victory, as witnessed by Marcelo Paiva and resurrected by Torres (and, briefly, by Brazilian legend Fernanda Montenegro, Torres’ Oscar-nominated mother), is not just about survival but fostering a family united in adversity.

Resistance takes the form of lives well lived. In every laugh shared, in every new memory made and family photo taken, this clan honors those no longer physically present.

'I'm Still Here' In Portuguese with English subtitles Rated: PG-13, for thematic content, some strong language, drug use, smoking and brief nudity

[rsnews555]

‘Ainda Estou Aqui’: Longa com Fernanda Torres vence prêmio de Melhor Roteiro no Festival de Veneza

Inspirado no livro homônimo de Marcelo Rubens Paiva, o longa ‘Ainda Estou Aqui‘, dirigido por Walter Salles, que foi aplaudido por 10 minutos na sessão de sua estreia mundial, acaba de receber o prêmio de melhor roteiro para Murilo Hauser e Heitor Lorega, na competição oficial do 81º Festival de Veneza, o Golden Osella, entregue […]

[whileiamdying]

‘I’m Still Here’ Review: When Politics Invades a Happy Home

The award-winning Brazilian film has been a major hit in its home country — and it’s easy to see why.

Fernanda Torres in “I’m Still Here.”Credit...Alile Onawale/Sony Pictures Classics

By Alissa Wilkinson Jan. 16, 2025 I'm Still Here NYT Critic’s Pick Directed by Walter Salles Biography, Drama, History PG-13 2h 16m

It may be axiomatic, but it’s still profound: our sense of self is determined by the accumulation of our memories. That’s why science fiction has obsessed over the idea of technologies that might delete or alter memory, and thus the memory-holder. It’s also why it’s so devastating to watch a loved one lose their memories, becoming some other person in the process.

This is true on the broader level, too; societies, after all, are just groups of people who share memories. Filmmakers from around the world, but especially from South American countries, seem particularly attuned to this fact lately. They propose that you can reshape the character of a group of people by messing with collective memory, and that’s why governments are often keen to brush over the past. In the last few years, acclaimed movies such as “Azor,” “The Eternal Memory” and “Argentina, 1985” have explored the personal impact of the mass disappearances under military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. More broadly, they show how attempts to deny or ignore those disappearances have lasting effects on those who survived.

The beautiful, gutting “I’m Still Here” joins these with its own story, this one in Brazil. Directed by Walter Salles, one of the country’s most celebrated filmmakers, “I’m Still Here” is based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, whose father, the congressman Rubens Paiva, was among the estimated 20,000 people who were tortured during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

Skillfully crafted and richly shot, “I’m Still Here” begins in Rio de Janeiro in 1970 when, despite the encroachment of the military on daily life, the sizable, loving Paiva family is largely living in domestic bliss. Rubens (Selton Mello) has recently returned home from six years of self-imposed exile, following his ouster from government during the revolution. He and his wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), have five children, four daughters and a son, ranging in age from grade school to older teens. They live near the beach, entertain friends, dance in the living room and have a happy, bustling home. Rubens is still working to support political expatriates, but he keeps his activities out of his family’s sight.

One day, though, the couple’s daughter Vera (Valentina Herszage) is stopped and searched by the authorities while driving home from a movie with friends. Soon after, news of left-wing activists kidnapping the Swiss ambassador breaks, kicking off a period of instability that rapidly escalates. When men show up at the Paiva home, demanding Rubens come with them to some unknown place for questioning, Eunice and the children know something is happening. Rubens doesn’t return. And then Eunice and her daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are brought in for questioning, too.

This is the moment when the film pivots toward Eunice, who is not just the heroine in the film but in real life, too. This movie is her story: She is a woman whose life has been ripped to shreds, deciding that she will not be cowed. She will not only make a life for her children under immense, repressive odds, but pour herself into changing the world, too. In her performance — which won a Golden Globe and is aiming at an Oscar nomination — Torres stuns. Protecting her children means leaning into joy within the fear, hope in the midst of pain. Torres double-layers her performance with all of those emotions, and her searching eyes are magnetic.

But this is not just a movie about a strong woman, though it certainly is that. It’s also about what authoritarian regimes do to keep people in line, the totalitarian tactic of making people doubt what they know they’ve seen by insisting on unabashed lies. It’s not as if anyone barges into the Paiva home with guns and handcuffs — though Rubens’s privileged status as a former elected lawmaker and public figure, it’s suggested, has something to do with that.

Rather, the control comes through mind games and gaslighting, through denying the plain truth the family can see before their eyes. Official government claims of Rubens’s escape from confinement are obviously false (it took until 2014 for anyone to be charged with his death), and the family is left in limbo. It’s infuriating to watch, all the more because it really happened, and not just to the Paivas.

“I’m Still Here” stretches its storytelling across decades, tracing the long arm of the disappearances and their effect on a country, even when some might prefer to move on, to forget the past atrocities committed by those who are no longer in power. When a reporter asks Eunice if they shouldn’t just pay attention to more urgent issues than “fixing the past,” she firmly disagrees. Families should be compensated for the crimes, but more important, the country needs to “clarify and judge all crimes committed during the dictatorship,” she insists. “If that doesn’t happen, they will continue to be committed with impunity.”

“I’m Still Here” was released in Brazil in November 2024. Despite far-right campaigns urging people to boycott the film, it has been a huge hit, the highest-grossing Brazilian film in the country since the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have noted that the film hits hard in a country that — unlike Chile and Argentina — has never officially pursued accountability for the military’s role in torturing and murdering citizens during the dictatorship. The movie was also released just as details emerged of a plotted coup to keep former President Jair Bolsonaro, who defended the military dictatorship, in power after he lost the 2022 election.

So the film’s popularity is no mystery. Yet “I’m Still Here” does not present as a simple polemic about a historical and political situation, and that’s the secret to its global appeal. It’s also a moving portrait of how politics disrupts and reshapes the domestic sphere, and how solidarity, community and love are the only viable path toward living in tragedy. And it warns us to mistrust anyone who tries to erase or rewrite the past. Throughout the story, Salles repeatedly shows the family shooting photographs and Super 8 film that preserve their memories. The director has said that movies are “instruments against forgetting, and that he believes “cinema reconstructs memory.” With “I’m Still Here,” he’s aiming to make sure nobody can forget.

I’m Still Here Rated PG-13 for what happens during life under dictatorship, including sounds of torture. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 16 minutes. In theaters.

A correction was made on

Jan. 16, 2025: An earlier version of this review described incorrectly some of the actions taken toward Brazilians by the military dictatorship. An estimated 20,000 people were tortured, but only hundreds disappeared.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.

[whileiamdying]

A Surprise Blockbuster in Brazil Stokes Oscar Hopes, and a Reckoning

Decades after her mother missed out on an Oscar, Brazil’s Fernanda Torres may have a chance to win a golden statuette with a role in a film that has set off deep soul-searching.

Fernanda Torres, 59, and her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, 95, at Ms. Torres’s home in Rio de Janeiro.

By Ana Ionova Photographs by María Magdalena Arréllaga Reporting from Rio de Janeiro

Fernanda Torres still remembers the day her mother, Brazil’s grande dame of film, came within reach of cinema’s most coveted prize: an Oscar.

“It had great symbolism for Brazil,” Ms. Torres, an acclaimed actress herself, said in an interview. “I mean, Brazil produced something like her, you know?” she added. “It was very beautiful.”

A quarter-century ago, Fernanda Montenegro, now 95, made history when she became the first Brazilian actress to be nominated for an Academy Award. She lost to Gwyneth Paltrow, and Brazil never got over what it considered a snub.

Now, Ms. Torres, 59, is attracting chatter in Hollywood that could put her in line to win the elusive golden statuette for a role that has ignited cinematic fever — and a national reckoning — in Latin America’s largest country.

Millions of viewers are packing theaters to watch “I’m Still Here,” a quiet drama starring Ms. Torres about a family torn apart by a military junta that ruled Brazil, by fear and force, for over two decades.

This past week, the movie was nominated for a Golden Globe for best foreign language film, and Ms. Torres was nominated in the lead actress category, bolstering Oscar hopes.

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Oscars, will not reveal its nominations until January, “I’m Still Here” is Brazil’s official entry in the international feature film category.

At home, the movie has struck a nerve in a nation that suffered through the brutal dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

Ms. Torres in a scene from “I’m Still Here.” The movie depicts a family living under Brazil’s military dictatorship.

Set in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, “I’m Still Here” tells the story of Eunice Paiva and her five children, whose lives are upended when the family patriarch, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman played by Selton Mello, disappears at the hands of the military government.

By telling this family’s story, the film tackles a “piece of Brazilian history” that is being forgotten, said Walter Salles, the movie’s director and one of the nation’s most prolific filmmakers. “The personal story of the Paiva family is the collective story of a country.”

The film has quickly become a national treasure, breaking box office records and eclipsing usual crowd-pleasers like “Wicked” and “Gladiator 2.”

Since the release of “I’m Still Here” in early November, more than 2.5 million Brazilians have seen it in theaters, and it has grossed more than six times the amount made by last year’s most-watched Brazilian film.

In a troubling twist, the movie was being widely shown in Brazil just as the police revealed new details about a plot to stage a coup and keep the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, a defender of the military dictatorship, in power after he lost the 2022 election.

Against this backdrop, the film’s themes have gained an urgent new meaning, said Marcelo Rubens Paiva, whose book about his family inspired the movie.

“The timing was, unfortunately, perfect,” he said, “because it showed this story isn’t just in our past.”

The home in Rio de Janeiro where “I’m Still Here” was filmed. A military junta’s repressive rule lasted for more than two decades.

Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of people were disappeared and some 20,000 were tortured during the dictatorship. But, unlike Chile or Argentina, where many crimes committed there under military dictatorships have been tried and punished, Brazil has not pursued accountability for its military’s atrocities.

In recent years, what many had seen as the distant past began to creep into the present. Mr. Bolsonaro, a retired army captain, spoke frequently in nostalgic terms about the dictatorship, awarded thousands of government jobs to soldiers and dismantled a panel investigating crimes committed during the military’s rule.

Movies and other forms of cultural works were frequent targets of censorship during the dictatorship, which considered them political foes. Now, films like “I’m Still Here” can serve as “instruments against forgetting,” Mr. Salles said. “Cinema reconstructs memory.”

And the film has surely ignited Brazil’s collective memory. In classrooms and newspaper pages, heated debates are unfolding over the legacy of the dictatorship. On social media, stories of suffering at the hands of the military government have gone viral, drawing millions of views.

On a recent rainy weekday, as moviegoers packed a Rio de Janeiro theater, it was clear that “I’m Still Here” had cast a wide spell. Groups of teenagers, fathers and sons and older couples were all clutching tickets.

Some snapped selfies in front of the movie’s poster. Others took deep breaths before stepping into the theater’s darkness.

Inside, the crowd gasped at the sounds of the torture of political prisoners; teared up when Eunice, played by Ms. Torres, defiantly smiled for a newspaper photo, unwavering in the face of tragedy; and stifled sobs when Ms. Montenegro made a silent appearance in the closing scenes, as an older Eunice whose memories were fading.

The film echoed a familiar past for many. “It shows everything we lived through,” said Dr. Eneida Glória Mendes, 73, who grew up in a military family during the dictatorship.

Dr. Mendes, who has watched the film twice, remembers ripping up letters she received from friends who criticized the regime so that her father would not see them. Anyone sending or receiving such correspondence could have been detained.

“We were not free,” she said. “Even a silly criticism could lead to arrest.”

For younger Brazilians, the film offered a glimpse into a reality they had heard about only at school. “For my generation, there’s this thirst to know more,” said Sara Chaves, 25, an aspiring actress.

Sara Chaves outside a theater showing “I’m Still Here” in Rio de Janeiro. Referring to the military dictatorship, she said, “There’s this thirst to know more.”

“I’m Still Here” has also captivated audiences and critics abroad. When it premiered in Venice this year, it won an award for best screenplay and drew a thundering applause that lasted 10 minutes.

So when the academy shared an image on social media of Ms. Torres at a Hollywood industry gala last month, Brazilians went wild. “Give her the award already!” said one of the more than 820,000 comments on Instagram.

If she is nominated in the best actress category, Ms. Torres would be following a remarkably similar path to her mother, who was nominated in 1999 for her role as a letter writer for illiterate people in “Central Station,” a Brazilian classic also directed by Mr. Salles.

“There was this feeling in the country that she was deeply wronged,” said Isabela Boscov, a Brazilian cinema critic who has been reviewing films for three decades.

“I’m Still Here” is widely expected to receive a nomination in the international film category, according to Hollywood insiders, but Ms. Torres’s chances are more uncertain.

Sony Pictures Classics, the studio distributing “I’m Still Here” globally, which launched the successful best actress nomination bid for Ms. Montenegro, is making a concerted push for Ms. Torres. Yet she may face tough odds this year in a crowded field that includes names like Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman.

To Ms. Torres, an Oscar nomination “would be a big victory” in itself, but she is not getting her hopes up. “It would be an incredible story if I got there, following my mother,” she said. “Now, winning — I consider it impossible.”

Since the first Oscars ceremony in 1929, only two actresses have won awards for leading roles in foreign-language films.

On a recent Sunday afternoon at Ms. Torres’s home, she sat across from her mother, reminiscing about art and family and other films the two have made together.

“This is also a legacy of life, of a profession,” Ms. Montenegro said, gesturing toward her daughter, then herself.

In 1999, Ms. Montenegro became the first Brazilian actress to be nominated for an Oscar, for her role in “Central Station.”

After a career spanning more than seven decades, Ms. Montenegro is still acting in films and onstage. But her movements are slower, her eyesight is weakening and she rests more.

Sharing a character with her daughter, in a film that has inspired awe and soul-searching across Brazil, has carried personal symbolism, too. “It’s a really special moment,” Ms. Montenegro said.

After a final lipstick check in the mirror, the two actresses faced a camera for a photograph for this article. They moved their faces close together, their cheeks nearly touching. Like Eunice Paiva, in the movie both are in, they prefer to smile.

“My mother is still alive; all is well with her,” Ms. Torres explained. “I’m happy.”

“By chance, I’m still here,” Ms. Montenegro replied. Ms. Torres chimed in: “We’re still here.”

After a career spanning more than seven decades, Ms. Montenegro is still acting in films and onstage. But her movements are slower, her eyesight is weakening and she rests more.

Sharing a character with her daughter, in a film that has inspired awe and soul-searching across Brazil, has carried personal symbolism, too. “It’s a really special moment,” Ms. Montenegro said.

After a final lipstick check in the mirror, the two actresses faced a camera for a photograph for this article. They moved their faces close together, their cheeks nearly touching. Like Eunice Paiva, in the movie both are in, they prefer to smile.

“My mother is still alive; all is well with her,” Ms. Torres explained. “I’m happy.”

“By chance, I’m still here,” Ms. Montenegro replied. Ms. Torres chimed in: “We’re still here.”

Kyle Buchanan contributed reporting from Los Angeles. Lis Moriconi contributed research. A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 15, 2024, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Brazil’s Oscar Contender Strikes a Nerve.

[whileiamdying]

‘I’m Still Here’ Review: Walter Salles Returns Home With the Powerful Story of a Broken Family’s Resistance

Premiering at Venice, the film stars Fernanda Torres as a mother of five children who reinvents herself as a lawyer and activist after suffering a devastating loss at the height of Brazil’s military dictatorship.

BY DAVID ROONEY SEPTEMBER 1, 2024 @ 11:48AM

Fernanda Torres in 'I'm Still Here.' COURTESY OF VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

Walter Salles’ 1998 international breakthrough, Central Station, earned an Oscar nomination for the magnificent Fernanda Montenegro. Now in her 90s, the actress turns up toward the end of the director’s first feature in his native Brazil in 16 years, the shattering I’m Still Here(Ainda Estou Aqui), in a role that requires her to speak only through her expressive eyes. What makes the connection even more poignant is that she appears as the elderly, infirm version of the protagonist — a woman of quiet strength and resistance played by Montenegro’s daughter, Fernanda Torres, with extraordinary grace and dignity in the face of emotional suffering.

Many powerful films have been made about the 21 years of military dictatorship in Brazil, from 1964 through 1985, just as they have about similar oppressive regimes in neighboring South American countries like Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. The human rights abuses of systematic torture, murder and forced disappearances represent an open wound on the psyches of those nations, for which cinema has often served as a vessel for collective memory.

It’s not often, however, that the spirit of protest against the horrors of junta rule is viewed through such an intimate lens as I’m Still Here. That aspect is deepened by evidence throughout the film of Salles’ personal investment in the true story of the Paiva family after patriarch Rubens (Selton Mello), a former congressman, was taken from his Rio de Janeiro house in 1971, ostensibly to give a deposition, and never seen or heard from again.

Salles met the family in the late 1960s and spent a significant part of his youth in their home, which he credits as foundational to his cultural and political development. That accounts for the coursing vitality of the early scenes, as the five Paiva siblings dash back and forth between the house and the beach, and an extended family of friends of all ages seems to be constantly dropping by for drinks and meals and music and lively conversation.

There are sweet throwaway moments like two of the sisters dancing and singing along to the Serge Gainsbourg-Jane Birkin wispy make-out classic “Je t’aime … moi non plus,” without understanding the words. Just watching how one of the youngest kids, Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira), sweet-talks his way into keeping a stray dog they found on the beach conveys the warmth, spontaneity and affectionate scrappiness of the Paiva household dynamic. The young actors playing the kids are all disarmingly natural and appealing.

The first blunt intrusion into the family’s bubble of closeness and comfort comes when eldest daughter Vera (Valentina Herszage) is out with a group of friends and their car is pulled over at a tunnel roadblock. It’s a disturbing scene in which we see teenagers — just minutes earlier cruising along, sharing a joint and laughing — ordered at gunpoint to stand against a wall while military officers question them, searching their faces for any resemblance to the “terrorist killers” they’re looking to apprehend.

An occasional hushed phone conversation or private exchange with a friend suggests Rubens’ involvement in something that needs to be kept quiet. But the script by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, based on the book by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, saves those details until long after Rubens is taken into custody. That puts us in the same position as his wife and children, wondering what their father could possibly have done to place him in the regime’s crosshairs.

The chill of uncertainty is hardest on Rubens’ wife Eunice (Torres), who does what she can to hide what’s going on from the youngest kids. But having armed strangers in their house and a car parked across the street to keep a constant eye on them is tough to explain, and the older siblings are aware something is very wrong.

The situation escalates when Eunice is hauled off for interrogation. With Vera away in London with family friends, the next oldest, 15-year-old Eliana (Luiza Kozovski), is forced to accompany her mother, with bags put over their heads to keep them from knowing where they are being taken.

The interrogation scenes, set in a grim building with confinement cells, are harrowing. Eunice is sequestered for 12 days. Denied contact with the family lawyer, she’s kept completely in the dark about what’s happening to her daughter and is unable to learn where her husband is being held. She’s coerced over and over to identify people in photo files as possible insurgents, but aside from her husband, she recognizes only one woman who teaches at her daughter’s school. Her isolation and fear are made worse by the constant screams of people being tortured coming through the walls.

There are many moments of raw tenderness after Eunice is released — notably when one of her daughters watches from the bathroom doorway, her face a mix of sorrow and terror, as her mother showers away 12 days of grime.

With the government refusing to acknowledge even that her husband was arrested, Eunice continues fishing for information, talking to Rubens’ friends who tell her the military is “shooting blind,” going after random people based on almost nothing concrete. Unable to make bank withdrawals without her husband’s signature, she struggles to keep up with expenses. At the same time, she begins studying the family lawyer’s case file, foreshadowing her eventual decision to relocate with the five children to São Paulo and return to college.

The chief focus of Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s book is essentially his mother’s quiet heroism — first as she single-handedly shoulders the responsibility of keeping the family together and protected, concealing her grief when the inevitable is confirmed, and subsequently when she earns a law degree at 48 and becomes active in a number of causes. That includes pushing for full acknowledgment from authorities of disappeared people like Rubens after democracy is returned to the country.

Salles’ heartfelt film jumps forward 25 years and then by almost 20 more, allowing us to absorb Eunice’s self-reinvention not in big crusading speeches but simply in her dedication to the work of keeping memories alive and not letting the abuses of the past be swept away.

Perhaps the most beautifully observed arc of the film is the gradual rebuilding of the family. As the children grow up and marry and grandchildren come along, they transition back into a noisy, joyful clan much like the one depicted in carefree scenes at the start. Even the simple process of sorting through boxes of family photos is viewed as a loving act of reclamation in a final stretch that will have many audiences in tears.

Torres (one of the stars of Salles’ terrific early film, Foreign Land, co-directed with Daniela Thomas) is a model of eloquent restraint, showing Eunice’s private pain and her necessary fortitude by the subtlest of means. Only once during the film does she raise her voice in anger after a sad occurrence, beating on the windows of the parked car watching the house in Rio and screaming at the two stone-faced men inside.

The final scenes in which Montenegro steps into the role are bittersweet, as Eunice has become nonverbal and uses a wheelchair, in steep decline with Alzheimer’s. The poignancy is almost overwhelming as we watch her gently lean in, her eyes lighting up and a hint of a smile forming, when Rubens’ photograph appears in a television program on the heroes of the resistance.

The movie looks gorgeous. Adrian Teijido’s agile cinematography uses 35mm to great grainy effect to evoke the ‘70s and Super 8mm home movies shot during that decade provide lovely punctuation. The other key asset to the film is Warren Ellis’ score, which starts out pensive and quietly troubling before shifting almost imperceptibly into a much more emotional vein with the surge of feeling that accompanies the forward time jumps.

While it could use a less generic international title that’s not also a well-known Stephen Sondheim song, I’m Still Here is a gripping, profoundly touching film with a deep well of pathos. It’s one of Salles’ best.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Oscars: Brazil Submits Walter Salles Picture ‘I’m Still Here’ To Best International Feature Film Race

Brazil has selected Walter Salles’ well-received comeback feature I’m Still Here to represent it in the Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

The picture stars Fernanda Torres as the real-life figure of Eunice Paiva, whose husband Rubens Paiva disappeared in the early years of the 1964 to 1985 Brazilian military dictatorship.

It enjoyed a buzzy world premiere in Venice in Competition, receiving a 10-minute ovation and going on to win Best Screenplay for Heitor Lorega and Murilo Hauser.

The film has since made its North American premiere in Toronto and is playing in San Sebastian this week, with lots of awards season chatter in the backdrop.

Continue reading.