Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here (2024) begins on a beach, where a married couple and their children take in the sun and sand, and ends in a house, where the same family comes for a celebration. The family has expanded, but one of them is missing.
The Oscar-winning movie is set during Brazil’s military dictatorship, which ran between 1964 and 1985 and resulted in severe repression, disappearances and extra-judicial killings. I’m Still There is based on the memoir of the same name by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, about his father, Rubens Paiva.
The dissident politician vanished in 1971. His body was never recovered.
In the film, Rubens’s disappearance shatters his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres). Tensions have been building up over the autocratic regime’s crackdowns. The couple’s friends are talking of fleeing the country. When Rubens vanishes one day, Eunice has no clue how to go about tracing him.
In a harrowing section of the film, Eunice is tortured by the very authorities from whom she seeks answers. One of her daughters is similarly treated. The film explores Eunice’s transformation into an activist, the courage she shows in rallying her children, the ways in which she connects her trauma to the anguish of others like her.
I’m Still There can be rented from BookMyShow Stream. The film is carried by Fernanda Torres’s deeply moving performance. Even as she keeps looking for Rubens, Eunice attends to her family’s needs. She is proud, dignified and even cheerful, never forgetting but never wilting either.
I’m Still Here is easily one of the best titled films about resisting authoritarianism. By keeping Rubens’s memory alive, Eunice refuses to give the dictatorship what it wants from her: defeat.
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