The Power of the Gaze and the Importance of Memory
Something that caught my attention during the onstage conversation with director Walter Salles and actress Fernanda Torres after the screening of I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) at the Palm Springs International Film Festival was the emotional response of the largely American audience. It was clear that they were visibly moved, as evidenced by the testimonies and questions from those who spoke up. These were people who had never lived under a military dictatorship, and perhaps it was difficult for them to fully grasp the historical context of the film. The sense of shock behind their emotional connection to the story may help explain the film’s worldwide success since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Best Screenplay Award.
Although the violent and arbitrary political climate in Brazil during the 1960s and 70s might seem far removed from the reality of Palm Springs citizens, the empathy for the protagonist’s struggle is immediate. Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) watches as her husband, a former congressman stripped of his position by the coup regime, is literally taken from their home by the state, never to return. She must at once manage her own grief, protect her five children who lose their father figure, and still hold on to the hope that justice will prevail. The situation is unique, but this warrior woman’s fight is universal and timeless.
The screenplay (by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega) and Salles’ direction balance the personal and the political, finding the right tone between a political expose and an intimate drama, without resorting to easy sentimentality. In 1985, in his book A Casa e a Rua, Brazilian anthropologist Roberto Da Matta discussed the contrast between the intimacy of the home (the “casa”) and the impersonality of the street (the “rua”). Totalitarian regimes, Da Matta notes, are characterized by control over all aspects of social life. In a recent article for O Globo newspaper, he observed that in I’m Still Here, “we witness a brutal intrusion into the Paiva family’s home by anonymous agents of the dictatorship, who arrive from the street and, without any plausible explanations, absurdly create insecurity and disharmony in a household driven by affection and joy.”
The affection and joy Da Matta refers to are highlighted in the first half hour of the film, in which the Paiva family lives an almost idyllic routine by the beach in the vibrant city of Rio de Janeiro. The natural beauty, captured in vivid detail, and the cultural effervescence driven by the Tropicalist musical movement, allow us to be oblivious that armed military personnel patrol the streets and that political dissidents of the dictatorship are trying to survive under constant persecution.
A backgammon game with her husband and the dream of a future house are abruptly interrupted by the arrival of the agents, who take Rubens to be interrogated and settle in their home. The festive atmosphere turns dark and tense. A foosball match between one of the invaders and the boy Marcelo does not lighten the mood; on the contrary—it accentuates the absence of the father, who had earlier been seen playing the same game with his son.
In I’m Still Here, physical violence is only suggested through the cries of pain heard in the prison hallways where Rubens, then Eunice, and their eldest daughter are taken. What is not shown, but left to the imagination, can be just as shocking and violent as scenes of prisoners being tortured, as cinema has often depicted explicitly.
Throughout the narrative, there are also subtle references that reflect the constant atmosphere of threat and vigilance. The death of the family’s pet, run over by the agents who monitor every step of Eunice and her children, carries great symbolic weight. Another moment occurs when Eunice, while organizing her husband’s documents, comes across the tooth of her youngest daughter, which Rubens had kept in a matchbox—a relic that could be linked to her husband’s remains, which were never found. The film avoids sentimentality, as evidenced by the absence of a musical score during these moments—the soundtrack, composed by Warren Ellis, is used sparingly.
Even so, it is hard not to be moved by scenes like the one where Eunice, shortly after learning from a friend that Rubens is dead, takes her children for ice cream. As she observes other happy families and groups of friends, we can read her thoughts through Fernanda Torres’ expressive gaze. The actress captures the character’s grief while conveying the strength Eunice needed to carry on and protect her children. Two ellipses transport the story from 1971 to 1996, when Rubens’ death certificate is met with relief, and then to 2014, when Eunice’s gaze now belongs to another Fernanda— actress Fernanda Montenegro, Torres’ mother—who tells us, without needing to say a word, that memory is the best antidote to the ghost of totalitarianism.
Marcelo Janot
Edited by Brian D. Johnson
©FIPRESCI 2025