Brazil’s Academy Award winner is the most emotionally affecting picture of 2024, the true story of a Rio de Janeiro household during the 20-year military dictatorship (1964 – 1985). Rubens Paiva thinks moving his family to the safety of London is unnecessary, until agents of the police state are at his door. Fernanda Torres’s performance is gold — her Eunice Paiva shows great personal strength against the regime’s interrogators. Our only domestic disc release appears to be a DVD.

I’m Still Here
DVD
Sony Pictures Classics
2024 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 137 min. / Ainda Estou Aqui / Street Date April 15, 2025 / Available from Moviezyng / 20.95
Starring: Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Valentina Herszage, Fernanda Montenegro, Maria Manoella, Bárbara Luz, Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, Luiza Kosovski, Marjorie Estiano, Guilherme Silveira, Antonio Saboia, Cora Mora, Olívia Torres, Pri Helena, Humberto Carrão.
Cinematography: Adrian Tejido
Production Designer: Carlos Conti
Film Editor: Alfonso Conçalves
Composer: Warren Ellis
Screenplay by Murilo Hause, Heitor Lorega from Ainda Estou Aqui by Marcelo Rubens Paiva
Produced by Maria Carlota Bruno, Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Rodrigo Teixeira
Directed by Water Salles

The truth be told, few of the Academy-honored films last year interested this viewer. An exception was the Brazilian production I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui), the best movie of its kind we’ve seen in years. It won this year’s Oscar for Best International Feature Film, a category that changed from ‘Best Foreign Film’ in 2019.

The story of Latin America in the 20th century is a crime and a tragedy from one end to the other. The U.S. seemingly preferred the ‘stability’ of military dictatorships, which in the 1970s ruled Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Our TV and radio covered these events as if they were happening on some other planet, completely unrelated to the United States. Hollywood depicted countries to our South as quaint and exotic, if at all. Their answer to political complexity was a terrible movie about  Cuba starring Omar Sharif as Che and Jack Palance as Fidel.

America film culture had gone political in the mid-sixties, with movies that derisive critics dissed as ‘Radical Chic.’  Brilliantly furious European films dramatized  armed resistance to colonial rule in Algeria and a political coup by  a cabal of Generals in Greece. But shows about the everyday human cost of Latin American dictatorships had to wait until political winds changed. Costa-Gavras’  Missing tells its story of the Pinochet coup in Chile through Americans played by Hollywood actors, but is extremely effective. The most affecting Argentinian movie publicized here was Luis Puenzo’s  The Official Story (La historia offical), which dramatizes the horrors of los desaparecidos under the military dictatorship.

Director Walter Salles is known here mainly for his popular film adaptation of  The Motorcycle Diaries, about the travels of the young Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. His I’m Still Here is an entirely true story, taken from a 2015 book. Nothing is exaggerated. It’s a very sad account of a family’s long ordeal; the only relief comes from our admiration of the leading character, who lets nothing crush her spirit. The movie’s political context is very important to Americans right now. A citizen is arrested — kidnapped, really — by ‘shadow police’ that don’t identify themselves. The government lies, saying that the arrestee has ‘left the country.’ When his wife protests, she’s ‘shadow arrested’ as well.

In 1964 a military coup in Brazil returned Congressman Rubens Paiva (Setlton Mello) back to his civil service job, but he has maintained a network of liberal friends. Six years later, a series of kidnappings of foreign diplomats triggers a security crackdown. Paiva lives with his large family in a showcase house in a choice Rio de Janeiro neighborhood, just a block from the beach. He and his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) look forward to moving into an even nicer house he is having built. But close friends are moving to London — the father is a publisher and owns a bookstore and anticipates more political trouble. Eunice talks Rubens into letting their eldest daughter Veroca (Valentina Hersage) go with them to England; the college-age girl has friends that the police might consider to be illegal activists.

Just a few days later, men presumed to be agents of the military government come and take away Rubens Paiva, and occupy the house. When Eunice protests publicly, she and another daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are arrested as well. The daughter is released but Eunice is held for days. She rejects her inquisitor’s claim that her husband has confessed to subversive activity. She acknowledges that she knows people whose photographs appear in arrest binders, but nothing more.

12 days later Eunice is released without explanation, but her family’s terrible emotional ordeal continues. Eunice can’t tell her younger children the full truth of what’s going on. The house is watched at all times by agents that won’t talk to her. She collects newspaper clippings about her missing husband. Will Eunice ask a lawyer to submit a writ of Habeus Corpus for Rubens?  Nobody will even admit that he was arrested. A woman who was held with Rubens could tell what she knows, but refuses to help. If she did she would obviously be re-arrested, and maybe disappear as well.

With Rubens still missing, it’s not long before everything in the Paiva household routine must change. Veroca returns from London and must also be protective of the little kids. The crisis is a Big Unknown that Must Not Be Openly Discussed, yet the Paiva teenagers do everything they can to help their mother. When the cook has to be let go, the sisters take up the household chores without issues.

It’s best to stop describing what happens at this point, as this new picture deserves to be discovered on a screen. Eunice’s experience in (one of many) military security centers is depicted as matter-of-factly as one can imagine. She’s too smart to try to reason with her ‘interviewers’; she doesn’t engage with them at all. She maintains her composure through almost two weeks of abusive interrogation. Those children back home depend on her …

I’m Still Here compels our full attention with a warm portrait of a very positive family, one we don’t want to see harmed in any way. In their early ‘forties, Rubens and Eunice are very much in love. Their happy kids appreciate their affluence and security. A world-class beach is right down the street, and the boys play futbol right in front of the handsome Paiva house. The daughters are vivacious and proud. It’s an idyllic setup.

The movie’s key publicity image expresses the film’s mix of joy and anxiety.  ↑  It’s a snapshot of Eunice and Rubens on the beach with two of their younger children. Rubens and the kids smile at the camera, but Eunice looks off to the right, as if cognizant of the pain and hardship to come. Much later, a magazine photographer asks Eunice and her children to ‘look sad’ for his picture. Eunice instinctively tells everyone to keep smiling … the Paivas will not play victims.

The show doesn’t work for standard thriller suspense but instead testifies to the character of Eunice Paiva. Fernanda Torres’ performance gives us a woman with enormous reserves of determination and grit. She’s too self-possessed to overreact and too worldly to be fully surprised by what is happening. The message is clear — what will you do if ‘politics’ brings about extra-legal detentions here, on the say-so of authorities you cannot question?

Eunice keeps a box with photos of precious family memories, and the movie at times reverts to a format like a scrapbook. It eventually makes two time-jumps to the future, to 1996, and then to 2014, bringing equal measures of closure and regret to the Paiva family saga.  ↑  Actress Fernanda Montenegro plays Eunice in the 2014 segment. The twin epilogues serve the film well. There’s no better demonstration of the preciouz precariousness of Democratic values, starting with the rule of law.

The heartbreak is redoubled at the finale, in which a wrap-up third epilogue and credits are fashioned from photos of the actual Paiva family. The old snapshots all but glow with life; we immediately realize that Salles and Fernanda Torres have captured something of the real Eunice Paiva.

Two other highly-recommended dramas about modern life in South America, made by South Americans. Both star Gael Garcia Bernal:

Even the Rain (También la lluvia, 2010) is a true story about the corporatization of the Third World, based on a true incident in which the Bolivian government contracts with a water company to privatize water itself. The citizens are told that they cannot dig wells or collect rainwater, but must buy it from the company.

No   (2013) is about a 1988 plebescite in Chile — the Pinochet government wants to prove to the outside world that it isn’t a dictatorship, by letting the citizenry vote if they want elections to be held. The generals think that the resistance has subsided, but they don’t count on an advertising agency that tackles the ‘No to Pinochet’ side of the campaign. The entire movie was filmed on Betacam tape, so as to match the actual Betacam tapes of the pro-election advertising used in the film. This show is an exception to the norm — it has a happy ending.

Sony Pictures Classics’ DVD of I’m Still Here is something of a surprise. We saw this important, award-winning show because several friends touted it as the best new film from 2024. We heartily agree. But there does not seem to be a domestic Blu-ray release. We do know of a UK Blu-ray coming in June; it could very likely be Region B locked.

It’s a good-looking Standard def encoding that does not lack in any way. The show was apparently shot on film. We like the representation of Rio de Janeiro as a vibrant hometown, not just a fancy beach or a hill with a giant statue. In 1970 the kids are into the same things we were — they talk about Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Vera’s record collection has a King Crimson album.

The film is in Portuguese, with an alternate Spanish track and removable English, French and Spanish subtitles. The physical disc has a plain label and a purplish sheen; I think it’s a burned-on-demand disc.

This is the one mainstread 2024 picture that I went out of my way to see; we highly recommend it. As Jonathan Demme would say, “A luta continua.”

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I’m Still Here
DVD rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent Spanish 5.1, Portuguese 5.1
Supplement: Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One DVD in Keep case
Reviewed: May 15, 2025
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