Brazil, France, 2024, 136′
Original title: Ainda Estou Aqui
Director: Walter Salles
Screenplay: Murilo Hauser, Heitor Lorega
Cinematography: Adrian Teijido
Editing: Affonso Gonçalves
Music: Warren Ellis
Cast: Fernanda Torres, Fernanda Montenegro, Selton Mello, Valentina Herszage, Maria Manoella, Bárbara Luz, Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, Luiza Kosovski, Marjorie Estiano
Production: VideoFilmes, RT Features, MACT Productions, arte France Cinéma, Conspiração Filmes, Globoplay
Distribution: Bim Distribuzione
Rio de Janeiro, 1971: Brazil is in the grip of military dictatorship. The Paiva family falls victim to a brutal government operation—Eunice suddenly finds herself without her husband, Rubens, left alone with five children. Forced to reinvent herself, she must protect her family and carve out a future different from the one society has imposed on her.
* * *
by Lorenzo Rossi
After his television experiences and a recent foray into Hollywood, Walter Salles returns home to tell a personal story and focus on one of the key moments in both his life and Brazil’s history. A buried past that his films had never explored—until now, when he finally confronts it: the military dictatorship.
I’m Still Here is based on the book of the same name by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, a renowned Brazilian writer, childhood friend of the director, and son of Rubens Paiva—an engineer and labor party congressman. The book recounts the fate of Rubens, who disappeared during the Christmas holidays of 1970 and was later brutally tortured and killed by the military police. His wife Eunice and their five children—including Marcelo, who was only eleven at the time—learned the truth about Rubens’ fate only thirty years later, in 1996, when the Brazilian government issued his death certificate and began investigating and prosecuting those responsible for the murder (though no convictions were ever reached).
That this is a deeply personal story, one that involves the director on a profound level, is evident from the very start. In the film’s first section, Salles portrays the idyllic, almost carefree family life of the Paivas. The narrative revolves around their beautiful home, just steps from Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, a place constantly filled with people—a vibrant, stimulating space brimming with energy and lightness. It was a house Salles himself visited as a child, and he reconstructs it based on memories filtered through emotions and personal recollections. Yet, with remarkable skill, he also turns it into a symbolic, almost spiritual space.
On one hand, a home like that—open to all, free, full of life, culture, and love—is the very antithesis of dictatorship. On the other, its transformation mirrors the collapse of democratic aspirations in Brazil. As the family descends into turmoil—Rubens’ arrest, followed by Eunice and their second daughter Eliana (later released), and the subsequent financial and social downfall—the house itself undergoes a radical shift. The first thing the militiamen do upon arresting Rubens is close the curtains, extinguishing its brightness. Gradually, the space becomes darker, narrower, silent. And empty. The final blow comes when Eunice and the children move to São Paulo, leaving the house behind. When it is later turned into a restaurant, any lingering hope is extinguished—for Rubens’ return, certainly, but also for the continuation of a dream, an illusion of carefree, innocent life. Both for the young members of the Paiva family and for a country slowly realizing that it was only at the beginning of a long and bloody chapter in its history.
The road Salles traces out of the trauma of dictatorship is as long and tortuous as the abrupt end of Brazil’s postwar dream of progress, democracy, and cultural growth. The narrative unfolds in distinct time blocks, shifting from 1971 to 1996 and then to 2014—marking the slow, painstaking process of overcoming and, at the same time, understanding the past. Eunice Paiva becomes the clearest embodiment of this journey.
A woman who spent her life fighting—both to secure a future for her children, earning a degree at 48 and becoming a respected university professor and advocate for the rights of Amazonian Indigenous communities, and to seek justice for her husband—Eunice represents not only resilience but also the necessity for an entire nation to confront its history. No matter the cost, and without compromising with that past. The film places significant focus on her story, and though it veers into a somewhat didactic tone in the second half, her experience stands as a lesson for all. Especially for those countries—including our own—that have known dictatorship firsthand and, in one way or another, still carry its weight.
Cineforum, January 29, 2025
