When the 2025 Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday, awards-watchers expected to see the titles “Emilia Pérez,” “Conclave” and “Wicked” in the lineup. But the gripping, humane Brazilian drama “I’m Still Here” was a surprise inclusion on the Best Picture list.
Pundits had expected the film to show up in the Best International Feature and potentially Best Actress (Fernanda Torres) categories, both of which it did, but the Academy members – 9,905 voters at last count – also supported the film across all branches to score a coveted Best Picture nomination.
“The Academy members have always gravitated to high quality work,” Michael Barker, co-president of the film’s distributor Sony Pictures Classics, told TheWrap. “Obviously, we knew that this film was high-quality and we knew that if we got enough Academy members to see it, we were going to have a shot.”
He added, “That strategy started a long time ago, and (fellow co-president Tom Bernard) and I have always contended that if the film is really good and if you get started early enough, you can get in there.”
And Barker should know. “I’m Still Here” marks Sony Pictures Classics’ 10th Best Picture nomination in its history, for films as idiosyncratic and beloved as “Capote,” “Amour,” “Whiplash,” “Call Me By Your Name” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
But Barker is also honest about the realities of an awards campaign. “Many fantastic films don’t make in it,” he said. “We’ve seen it with some great pictures this year. All we can do is get the most Academy members to see the film. They’re all going to see all the ‘A’ films, the ones that have the most star power and get the most attention. But there are so many other films which just don’t make the cut because enough Academy members haven’t seen them.”
That’s where organization comes in. SPC acquired “I’m Still Here” in May of last year, before the film had fully finished post-production. “When we came on board, we started working then on a strategy to get Academy members to see the movie,” Barker explained. “We did that with ‘Amour,’ we did it with ‘Call Me By Your Name.’ It makes a difference when you can get a long runway for your movie.”
“I’m Still Here” focuses on the real-life quest of Eunice Paiva (Torres, in a Gena Rowlands-caliber performance) to find justice for the government-related disappearance of her husband. It premiered to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival in September, later playing festivals in Toronto, New York and London.
Barker, who attends many of the screenings and in-person Q&As for his company’s films, noticed a vibe among the audiences watching the movie.
“Instant standing ovations at every screening, like at all the festivals and the AFI and so forth,” he said. “And when you get that kind of instant reaction, you know you’ve got something. It was so strong and so emotional. And then we were hearing from people who had screened the film on the Academy screening platform, and they were telling us about how the ways that the film so moved them.”
Barker continued, “So we knew that it worked both on the big screen and the smaller screen, but it always works better on the big screen. And so we strategized [in-theater screenings] from the very beginning, holding a lot of screenings and hoping that something like this might happen right around the release time.”
And indeed, “I’m Still Here” opened in a handful of theaters on Jan. 17, after briefly qualifying for the Oscars last year. Now it has the additional prestige of being a Best Picture nominee.
“We’re convinced the wider public is going to embrace this film,” Barker said. “This film is as good as any English-language political thriller with something to say. And so it’s obvious these nominations are going to help bring the film to a mainstream audience. And when a foreign-language film is nominated for Best Picture, all of a sudden that film gains an audience it might not have had before.”
“That’s why we always had the dream of getting that nomination,” he added. “The goal here is to get as many people as possible to see this masterwork and having this nomination will help realize that.”
Barker also pointed out that the film’s exposure benefitted from the Golden Globe win for Torres, which occurred a couple days before Oscar voting began. “Fernanda’s spectacular speech at the Golden Globes, for her incredible, major performance, was very helpful to getting the film attention,” Barker said. “Because we knew once people saw it, they would be for it.”
Sony Pictures Classics also released “Central Station,” the 1998 film that garnered an Oscar nomination for lead actress Fernanda Montenegro, Torres’ mother. “They are the second mother and daughter to both be nominated for the Oscar for best leading actress, after Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli,” Barker noted (and he is correct, though he indicated that other mother-daughter pairs have been nominated for the supporting actress Oscar).
“The Torres family, Fernanda’s father too, they’re like the Barrymores of Brazil,” he said. “It’s just great to see that handed down to generation to generation. Fernanda Montenegro, who’s way over 90 years old, she’s still performing in the theater in Brazil, as we speak. And she’s in [‘I’m Still Here’] as well.”
Barker also acknowledged the primary creative force behind the film and its Oscar glory. “That would be director Walter Salles,” he said. “We released his ‘Central Station’ 26 years ago and it’s such a great thing to work with this master filmmaker. His accomplishments as a director have been acknowledged by many and he has anchored this whole project from the very beginning.”
