I’M STILL HERE at AFI Fest 2024
By William J. Hammon, ActuallyPaid.com
As authoritarianism and fascism bafflingly continue to gain more traction around the world, it’s more important than ever to remind people just how devastating it was, and is. In that respect, Brazil’s Oscar entry, I’m Still Here, becomes an almost essential piece of filmmaking. This will likely be among the potential favorites for next year’s International Feature award, because not only is the story true to this realistic threat of both history and the modern day, but it’s a very straightforward, character-driven film that will be accessible to general audiences.
At the core of everything are the two leads, Eunice Paiva (played by Fernanda Torres), and her husband Rubens (Selton Mello). Taking place in 1971, the couple live in relative peace in Rio de Janeiro raising their five children (four daughters and a young son), but their tranquility is uneasy. Rubens, a former Congressman for the opposition party to Brazil’s ruling military dictatorship, is secretly part of an underground group that delivers messages and basic supplies to those in exile or who are wanted by the government. His actions are 100% non-violent, but any dissent is considered subversive, and thus punishable.
After sending their oldest daughter Vera (Valentina Herszage) off to London to live with their fleeing neighbors, armed men claiming to be from the Air Force show up at the Paiva home, eventually abducting Rubens. After several days of waiting, Eunice and second daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are also taken into custody, where they are heavily interrogated and coerced into naming names. Once freed, Eunice dedicates herself to learning the truth about her husband’s whereabouts, and resisting simply by existing in order to keep her family safe.
The resilience shown through Eunice’s character is admirable to say the least, and Torres gives a fantastic performance. But spare a thought for the younger players having to recreate a shameful chapter of the country’s recent past, compounded by the fact that Brazil had just rejected their incumbent president, Jair Bolsonaro, who thought that the campaign of torture and disappearances didn’t go far enough. The child actors didn’t experience anything like what happened to the Paivas, but they had their own current events to lean on for motivation, and it can’t have been easy. A lot of their plight is filtered through a dog that the family’s son (Guilherme Silveira) adopts as a stray on the beach, which is both inspiring and heartbreaking depending on the moment. What happened to Rubens Paiva didn’t transpire that long ago, and there are signs that the world may be ready to repeat these atrocities, and I’m Still Here delivers exactly the message needed for this particular moment, something audiences will understand regardless of nationality or language.
Originally published at http://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on November 25, 2024.
