Brazilian drama I’m Still Here isn’t just a movie — it’s a “global phenomenon,” in the words of a recent Vanity Fair headline. Based on a memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva and directed by Walter Salles, I’m Still Here chronicles one family’s experience under Brazil’s U.S.-backed military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985. The film broke post-pandemic box office records in Brazil, where many hailed it as a reminder of the dangers of authoritarianism.
A grassroots campaign helped propel I’m Still Here to Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress (for Fernanda Torres) and Best International Feature Film. Catch it before Sunday’s ceremony at the Savoy Theater in Montpelier; or on Friday, March 21, 4 and 7 p.m., at the Vermont International Film Foundation in Burlington.
The deal
In 1970, the Paiva family celebrates Christmas on the beach, which they can see from their comfortable home in Rio de Janeiro. Rubens (Selton Mello), an engineer, is at work on plans for a bigger house. Eunice (Torres) loves to entertain guests with her famous soufflé. Their five children are busy with volleyball, tanning, joy rides and smuggling a stray dog into the house.
Meanwhile, outside this seemingly charmed family circle, the conflict between the military government and its revolutionary opposition intensifies. After eldest daughter Veroca (Valentina Herszage) is questioned at a police checkpoint, her parents send her abroad so she won’t get dangerously involved with politics during college.
One day, armed men come to the door. The regime’s police have a few questions for Rubens, a former congressman whose political career ended with the military takeover. He leaves with them and does not return. Eunice’s efforts to learn her husband’s fate put her on a perilous, decades-long quest for some form of justice.
Will you like it?
Don’t come to I’m Still Here expecting a grim tale of the downtrodden. One likely reason for the movie’s success is that it focuses more on the strength and resilience of the Paiva family than on their suffering — though it certainly doesn’t skip over the latter. In a key scene, the family poses for a tabloid photographer who instructs them to look sad about Rubens’ disappearance. Eunice refuses, instead telling the children to smile. Their exuberance becomes an act of resistance.
Also don’t come expecting a historical primer. I’m Still Here features little exposition, and much goes unspoken — fittingly, given that silence and self-censorship were the safest options under the regime. American viewers may need to do a bit of reading to learn, for instance, that banned artists feature in the Paivas’ prized vinyl record collection.
Salles’ approach here is less informative than immersive. The director was friendly with the Paivas in his teens, the era the film focuses on, and we feel the intimacy in every sun-drenched, nostalgic frame. This is a message movie with beach scenes, not courtroom scenes. Eunice is a swimmer, her forceful crawl a reminder of her determination. Often we see the world through Veroca’s Super 8 camera: a jumble of sea and sky and other vivid fragments suggestive of memory.
The effect of these stylistic choices is to make the Paivas’ ordeal all the more shocking to our sensibilities, because their world isn’t visibly gray or dystopian or whatever stereotypes of dictatorship we’ve absorbed. It seems “normal,” affluent, even idyllic — until family members are toted away, locked up in dark cells and interrogated.
Torres’ performance is a masterpiece of tight-lipped nuance, the antithesis of melodrama. Stepping up to head her family, Eunice keeps her emotions under wraps, protecting her children by withholding dangerous truths from them. Mello’s Rubens is more demonstrative, all sweetness, humor and strength — one of the most likable portrayals of a dad in recent films. We feel the pain his absence causes his children (also wonderfully portrayed) because the film captures his affection for them in small, seemingly trivial moments.
I’m Still Here lacks a traditional dramatic arc of conflict and resolution. We must intuit Eunice’s key decisions, and some triumphant moments in the true story — such as the former homemaker’s obtaining a law degree in her forties — happen off-screen. Instead of a continuous through line, Salles uses two large time jumps to show how events in the early ’70s affected the family over decades. For some viewers, those gaps may be alienating, but others will tear up as they register the resonances between past and present.
Salles told Vanity Fair that he considers I’m Still Here “an indictment against authoritarianism,” and it is a powerful one. Watching this piece of history unfold, you may find yourself wishing that the patterns it depicts were safely in the past.
If you like this, try…
Chile ’76 (2022; Kanopy, Kino Film Collection, rentable): Viewers of I’m Still Here may ask themselves: What would I do under a dictatorship? Would I fight back? Continuing that theme, Manuela Martelli’s acclaimed film follows a well-off woman who must decide whether to shelter a resistance fighter in the wake of Augusto Pinochet’s military coup.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024; rentable): Those questions are also raised by one of the other contenders for Best International Feature Film. Set and secretly filmed in Iran, this drama takes a scathing look at the effects of totalitarian rule on one family.
Roma (2018; Netflix): The loving early-1970s nostalgia of I’m Still Here recalls Alfonso Cuarón’s black-and-white drama inspired by his childhood in Mexico City.
Correction, February 27, 2025: An earlier version of this story misstated the screening date at the Vermont International Film Foundation.
The original print version of this article was headlined “I’m Still Here”
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2025.
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