Overview
In the early 1970s, the military dictatorship in Brazil reaches its height. The Paiva family - Rubens, Eunice, and their five children - live in a beachside house in Rio, open to all their friends. One day, Rubens is taken for questioning and does not return.
Based on Marcelo Ruebens Paiva’s memoir of the same name, and directed by Walter Salles, I’m Still Here tells the true story of the Paiva family’s plight during the military dictatorship of Brazil in 1970, focussed primarily on Marcelo’s mother, Eunice.
In 1970, a former congressman, Rubens Paiva, who fled to exile during the 1964 coup d’etat that saw the military dictatorship install itself in Brazil, returns to Rio de Janeiro with his family to return to his civil career. Family life is normal, with an idyllic environment for his family located near the beach providing some normality in an era where military stop-and-searches are frequent. After the kidnapping of the Swiss ambassador by far left revolutionaries, political instabiltity threatens to impose on the locales of Rio de Janiero. Then, in January of 1971, the Paiva home is raided by the military, who take Rubens for questioning about his connections with the resistance movement. His wife, Eunice, seeks answers to where he has been taken, which results in her and their eldest daughter, Eliana, being arrested and interrogated. After 12 days, Euinice was released, but never gave up in her search for answers as to what happened to Rubens, pushing for answers to how he could simply disappear without any record.
As the center of this true tale, Fernanda Torres absolutely engages as Eunice, with a performance that shows a desperate wife and mother balancing her care and love for family with her anger towards the injustice being served against her. Around this central role the cast who portray the various family members all equally breathe life into their parts, making for a very real, and very believable family dynamic which we are granted significant time in the first act of the film to connect with, before the military invasion of their home that pushes the tale into the second half. During those early scenes we get a feel for how a family gets on with everyday life, whilst in the background the political situation of the country casts an ever present shadow. When the military arrest Rubens, there isn’t exaggerated drama, with everything being done in a civil manner, allowing a rather curious growing tension as armed police in civilian clothes remain with the family, and casually interact without intimidation or threat. It is through the normality of such moments that the film really grows its political strength – in many cases these were people doing their jobs for a political regime that controlled the land, and many were simply just doing the job assigned to them, unaware of what happens to those who are taken away.
That central powerful performance from Torres, coupled with some of the strongest direction that Salles has delivered over his already impressive career, this is a film that explores political themes through the eyes of a family who are impacted directly by it, whilst never oversells the emotional aspects, instead simply showing a very real true life tale with no exaggerated embellishments. A powerful film, and a crucially important film, about individual voices finding power against dark regimes that are driven by misinformation and corruption.