The latest feature from Walter Salles (“Central Station,” “The Motorcycle Diaries”) tells the remarkable story of Eunice Paiva. Known as a human rights activist in Brazil, Paiva became a lawyer after her husband Rubens was disappeared during the Brazilian dictatorship, in 1971. The film follows her quest for justice all the way up to the modern day.
“I’m Still Here” marks the first feature film by Salles since 2012’s “On the Road,” though he directed shorts and a documentary about Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke. As a child Salles knew the Paiva family, though the film is not a memoir from his perspective.
Instead, it’s adapted from an autobiography by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the son in the family, and reorients the story around matriarch Eunice. She’s played in a fiercely concentrated, Gena Rowlands-caliber performance, by Fernanda Torres – and in a late-film cameo by Torres’s mother Fernanda Montenegro, 95, an Oscar nominee for Salles’s “Central Station.”
That beloved movie was also the last Brazilian film nominated for the Best International Film Oscar. “I’m Still Here,” which will be released by Sony Pictures Classics in January, is the country’s submission this year.
The first 30 minutes of the movie take place in the family’s home near the beach. We see kids playing in the street. One of those boys, back then, was actually you, right?
That’s correct. I lived in the same neighborhood. Meeting the five kids and being invited to that house opened up a world of new possibilities to me. Suddenly I was in an environment where different groups were freely discussing politics and listening to music that was forbidden at the time. The windows were open and there was no key in the door, which was so rare given the political situation of the country. And we adolescents were allowed to listen to conversations that I never accessed in my own house.
The film does not obsess over politics. Its larger point is that Rubens’ abduction and murder was a crime, regardless of what he believed.
I think it is political, in essence, but the political stems from the humanity of the characters. It’s an effective way of being political, because by embracing Eunice’s point of view, we go through the institutional channels with her. She became a lawyer who was extremely effective in eroding the dictatorship and ensuring the re-democratization of Brazil. But that came out of her quiet inner strength. And her understatement, politically, was very destabilizing.
Eunice is played by Fernanda Torres. She has said that if her character cried in the film, you would edit it out.
Well, when people are struggling with loss, the first thing they do is try to retain the emotion. And in real life, Eunice never allowed herself to be seen as a victim. Whenever the family would be photographed, she would ask the kids to smile. So to portray this woman in full honesty, we had to embrace her perception of life.
Fernanda’s goal was so difficult: To portray an emotion that would be steaming and bubbling inside her, without allowing it to be expressed in any melodramatic manner. And for her as an actress, it was like walking on a tightrope in between buildings. Because if she diminished the information too much, then the audience doesn’t see what the character is truly enduring. But if she overdid it, then the film would be betraying the very essence of her character. Somehow, incredibly, she did it. There are very few who could hit that balance of emotion.
The film has been screened at many festivals since winning a prize at Venice in September. What has been the reaction of audiences so far?
It’s so interesting how many different cultures react similarly to the story. Something happened after a screening in New York, when I was approached by a tall, young man who told me that the film reminded him so much of his relationship with his father. His father was killed on September 11th.
Oh, wow.
I was touched by talking to that man, because for him the film was a life affirmative story about how you can survive terrible loss. But also there’s the feeling of when someone disappears, which he can relate to, unfortunately. The person who was literally there is then all of a sudden not there anymore. And how painful that is, even beyond grief. Without the presence of the body, you don’t go through the same rituals.
I’m reminded of the Virgil quote at the 9/11 museum, now in the context of your movie: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.”
Exactly. That’s an extraordinary quote and it applies so powerfully, not just to Rubens Paiva in our film, but to all the loved ones who have been lost and disappeared.
A version of this story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/ International issue of TheWrap awards magazine. Read more from the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue here.
