Walter Salles returns home with a powerful story

In movies, political resistance often takes the form of protest, hunger strike or armed uprising. But in Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here,” it comes in the shape of a defiant smile. The film stars Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva, the wife of Rubens Paiva, a former leftist Brazilian congressman who, at the height of the country’s military dictatorship in 1971, was taken from his family’s Rio de Janeiro home and never returned.

But the focus of “I’m Still Here,” based on the memoir by Paiva’s son Marcelo, is Eunice, the mother of five who was left to remake their family’s life with neither her husband nor any answers for his disappearance. It unfolds as a portrait of a different kind of political resistance — one of steadfast endurance. Eunice refuses the military dictatorship’s attempt to break her and her family. When, in one scene, Eunice and her children — by then long without their disappeared father — pose for a newspaper photograph, she tells them to smile.

“The smile is a kind of resistance,” Torres says. “It’s not that they’re living happily. It’s a tragedy. Marcelo recently said something that Eunice said that I had never heard: ‘We are not a victim. The victim is the country.’” “I’m Still Here,” which opens in theatres on Jan. 17, is a profoundly moving story of family life and political oppression.

It’s a deeply Brazilian story, made by one of the country’s most acclaimed directors (Salles’ films include “Central Station” and “Motorcycle Diaries”) and starring the daughter of one of the country’s greatest stars, Fernanda Montenegro. She appears late in the film as the older Eunice.

But “I’m Still Here” has taken on added meaning in Brazil and beyond. The film was released on the heels of the presidency of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who Brazilian federal police last year reported attempted a coup in 2022 to stay in power. (Bolsonaro, who has admiringly called the 1964 military coup “Liberty Day,” has denied any involvement.) In the years that Salles developed the film, he saw numerous other countries, and their citizens, reckoning with the rise of strongmen political leaders.

“When we started to develop the project seven years ago, it was truly about trying to bring light to a past that wasn’t sufficiently focused by Brazilian cinema,” says Salles. “Then, little by little, the political situation shifted to the point that we realized the film was about our present, and also about our future.”

Those reverberations, and the film’s acute sense of humanity, has made “I’m Still Here” a box-office sensation at home and a celebrated Oscar contender in the US At Sunday’s Golden Globes, Torres won best actress in a drama over a starry field of nominees including Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman. “I’m Still Here” is Brazil’s Oscar submission.

To Torres, Eunice Paiva is a heroine of Greek dimensions: a Penelope for modern times who won’t let the spirit of her family die. “She’s a great guide, this character, for nowadays,” Torres says. “It’s not about should we be to the right or to the left. It’s about humanity. It’s about the endurance of the family.”

For Salles, the story of the Paivas is particularly personal. Growing up in Rio, he was friendly with one of their children and often visited their teeming, music-filled home. “I remember a house where the door was always open — very unlikely under military dictatorship,” says Salles. “The windows were always open. Every time I went there, I met people I had never met before. It was a place to which people drifted. Later, I realized this was the Brazil I wanted to live in.”

The 59-year-old Torres, whose father was the actor Fernando Torres, grew up during the dictatorship that lasted until 1985. Her first memories of life under it are of her parents nervously preparing to perform plays for the government censor, who could 1 and sometimes did — cancel a production days before opening.

Associated Press