Programme Notes: I'm Still Here

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I’m Still Here Programme Notes

Camilla Baier, film programmer

11 February 2025

Please note: these programme notes contain descriptions of plot and characters and are best read after watching the film.

‘If we presented ourselves as victims, the dictatorship would win.’ This defiant refusal to be erased runs through every frame of I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui), Walter Salles’s deeply moving adaptation of Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir. This true story, which unfolds through the eyes of Marcelo’s mother Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), recounts how Eunice was left to raise five children alone after the disappearance of her husband, former congressman Rubens Paiva, in Rio de Janeiro during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985). More than simply a recounting of historical events, the film offers an intimate meditation on memory and survival, and a tribute to the quiet strength it takes to carry on in the face of devastating loss.

This sense of the personal is central to the film’s power. Salles has known the family personally since he was a teenager, and was friends with one of the younger Paiva daughters, and this direct connection imbues I’m Still Here with a palpable affection for the characters. In the opening scenes, we see the Paiva house alive with music, laughter, and dancing; a place of joy and intellectual exchange despite the turbulent political climate. This warmth feels almost nostalgic, a fleeting glimpse of the life that once was. ‘We drifted to that house because in it you could hear the political discussions that didn’t exist anymore,’ Salles remembers. ‘You could hear the music that was forbidden, the sounds of Tropicália I discovered there.’ Even with the records of Caetano Veloso (one of many artists exiled by the military dictatorship) filling the room, the growing tension outside would inevitably seep in. In an early scene we hear one of Rubens and Eunice’s friends remark ‘Brasília tá pegando fogo’ (Brasília is on fire). This passing reference to the military coup, feels eerily prescient in light of the 2023 storming of Brazil’s National Congress by Bolsonaristas; an echo of the cycles of political crisis that continue to haunt the nation.

The film’s power lies in how it confronts these echoes, weaving the personal with the political in a way that brings the past to life, lingering just below the surface. This blurring of past and present is reinforced by the use of family archive, which becomes central to how the story unfurls: Super 8 recreations of home videos, carefully staged family photos, and archival footage are woven seamlessly into the narrative. It’s no coincidence that the first step in making this film was recreating those family photos. Fernanda Torres described the process as ‘stepping into a time machine.’ Sets, costumes, and poses were meticulously reconstructed to blur the line between fiction and reality, past and present. The decision to shoot on film only enhances its tactile quality – grainy, imperfect, and deeply alive.

For Torres, the role of Eunice was also somehow personal and, in many ways, hauntingly familiar: ‘That house looked like my house in the ’70s. Eunice looked like my mother. I was that girl in the car, having a great time, until suddenly, we were stopped by the police. That fear of the police never really went away.’ Torres channels Eunice’s story with extraordinary emotional precision, portraying a woman whose personal history feels like an extension of Brazil’s collective memory. Her performance grounds the film, giving Eunice a quiet strength that refuses to bend or break under the weight of grief.

It’s a profoundly internalised performance, avoiding grand gestures or easy sentimentality. Torres’ portrayal feels lived-in and authentic, capturing a woman who doesn’t see herself as a hero but who navigates life’s challenges with pragmatism and resilience. It lingers on the reality of her situation; the quiet burden of bureaucracy, the frustration of being ignored by a system designed to strip her of her (little) power. There’s no sweeping transformation or reinvention. Eunice adapts because she has no choice. When she returns to university in her forties and later becomes a human rights lawyer, it feels less like a radical act and more like a continuation of the determination that had always defined her. Her work advocating for Indigenous communities in Brazil is shown not as a grand statement but as an extension of her refusal to be silenced.

One particularly powerful scene shows Eunice insisting that her family smile for a magazine photo, despite the tragedy that has upended their lives. Her insistence is not denial; it's defiance, a refusal to let the dictatorship control how their story will be represented. It’s a fleeting moment, but it stays with you.

Later in the film, Fernanda Montenegro takes on the role of the older Eunice, seamlessly continuing where her real-life daughter, Fernanda Torres, leaves off. National treasure Montenegro, a beloved icon of the Brazilian stage and screen, brings a quiet gravitas to the final chapters of Eunice’s life. The transition between the two performers feels almost symbolic, mirroring the film’s meditation on time, memory, and the legacies we pass on. There’s a tender, almost sacred quality to how Salles approaches these final moments, never slipping into melodrama. Montenegro’s performance is steeped in quiet dignity, and as Eunice’s memory fades, Salles confronts us in those last moments with not only what is lost but with the persistence of what remains.

And yet, the film is also still very much marked with absence: the absence of Rubens, whose disappearance leaves an unhealed wound at the heart of the family. The absence of a future that could have been, a speculative Brazil which might have been shaped by a collective struggle for democracy, rather than the cruel silencing of dictatorship. And later, in Eunice’s battle with Alzheimer’s, the painful absence of memory itself. There’s a heartbreaking irony in her diagnosis; the woman who fought so fiercely to preserve the memory of her husband and get justice over the violence of the regime, now finds herself losing her own grasp on the past.

In this sense, I’m Still Here is not just a personal story but a national one. Made at a time when Brazil is once again on the edge of political crisis, the film feels like both an act of resistance and a call to remember. ‘A country without memory is a country without a future,’ Salles has said, and this sentiment underpins the very essence of the film. It insists on the importance of remembering not just as survival but as a fight for justice. When the government finally officially acknowledged the long-denied truth about her husband’s fate, it was a powerful moment not just for Eunice, and for the Paiva family, but for Brazil as a whole.

In one of the film’s most poignant moments, Eunice is asked whether addressing the past is less urgent than focusing on the country’s future. Her response speaks volumes about the cost of justice, the courage to demand it, and the perseverance required to see it served.

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