• Ainda Estou Aqui  (I’m Still Here)

8/11/25 (Mon)

This biographical film by Brazilian master Walter Salles about one of the “disappearances” under the nation’s military dictatorship caught my interest right away after the fascinating They Shot the Piano Player, which dealt with the same phenomenon under the contemporaneous Argentine military dictatorship. (Now we need a Chilean film to complete the trilogy.) The movie is based on a memoir by the protagonist’s son.

The film unflinchingly depicts the horrors of the regime, not only the violence but the psychological trauma of the unknown. Still, the real theme is Eunice’s incredible resilience in the face of the ordeal, especially her determination to give her children a normal life as she works against all odds to learn her husband’s fate.

The setting is 1970 in Rio de Janeiro, when Brazil is under the control of a military regime. Former government official Rubens Paiva, having returned from self-imposed exile abroad after the coup d’état six years earlier, living an idyllic existence with his wife Eunice and their five children in a large house on the beach. We see the family swimming in the ocean, playing soccer, adopting a stray dog, dancing, gossiping, and otherwise enjoying a normal uneventful life. Signs of oppression are in the air: military helicopters fly over the beach, armored cars pass through the streets, and the eldest daughter and her friends are roughed up by the police in a random traffic stop, prompting the parents to send her to school in London. Additionally, the father receives mysterious phone calls and midnight package deliveries, suggesting continued underground political activity on his part. Nevertheless, the extended sequence at the start of the film suggests that the loving family is untouched by politics.

That changes when the authorities arrive at the home unannounced and take the father away for questioning, assuring the worried Eunice only that he’ll be released soon. In an ominous sign, they leave men behind to guard the house. As the days pass, Eunice presses the authorities for news, resulting in her arrest along with her teenage daughter. The police throw bags over the women’s heads, force them into dingy cells, and interrogate them separately about Rubens’ activities; Eunice only finds out when she is sent home 12 days later that her daughter was released earlier.

Eunice is determined not to let the situation affect her children and extended family. She continues to put on a brave face for their sake, telling them that he will be home soon. Her daughter in London, where the news is not censored, sends a frantic letter asking what is going on, but when Eunice reads it out loud for the family, she narrates completely different contents to prevent them from worrying. An especially memorable scene is when she poses with the family for a reporter doing a piece on her missing husband. She refuses his request to look solemn and insists that everyone smile as in their traditional family photos, symbolizing everything the movie is about.

Away from the family, Eunice relentlessly pushes for information and comes eventually to learn that he is dead. The authorities, however, refuse to acknowledge this, meaning that she is not officially a widow and thus cannot access his assets, life insurance or pension. She makes the tough decision to sell the family home and move to Sao Paulo, where she goes to school in her mid 40s and gets a law degree. She becomes a prominent civil rights attorney, but never gives up her quest to make the government recognize its part in her husband’s disappearance and death. She finally succeeds in obtaining a death certificate after 25 years, and demands that the government take responsibility for all its crimes. A coda shows her in 2014 as a pitiful old woman living with Alzheimer’s. The only sign of her old self is when the family photo is taken: the one thing she remembers is to smile.

Fernanda Torres lives up to the ecstatic reviews with a beautifully modulated performance balancing the air of normality she puts on for her family with the gritty resolve she brings to ferreting out the truth of her husband’s fate. Her Golden Globe Award and Oscar nomination are well deserved. Selton Mello also excels as the father, and the children are impressively natural across the board, a tribute to the director. I’m not sure if the epilogue with the withered Eunice is necessary other than that final smile, and it seems rather rude to the memory of the real Eunice. But one big plus is that the role is played, powerfully, by Torres’ mother Fernanda Montenegro, who won a Golden Globe herself (along with an Oscar nomination) nearly a quarter of century earlier.

I recalled in the animated film alluded to earlier that Brazil wasn’t able to complain about the murder of its citizen in Buenos Aires at that time because that would have exposed its own ills. This movie shows that in greater detail through the lens of a single family’s struggles, which is much harder hitting than a pure political work. While the opening sequence is a bit long and the closing sequence irrelevant, everything in between is near perfect. A tremendous film.