I'm Still Here

Released 2024. Director: Walter Salles

I'M STILL HERE IS A COMPELLING FILM made even more remarkable by an absence of an overt political critique, even though it is from beginning to end a very political film. Instead, it invites us into the life of a wife and mother who simply doesn't give up on a steady crusade to hold the government accountable for what they did to her husband. We see very little of the wider picture of turmoil and oppression, other than what transpires in one household.

Directed by Walter Salles and based on the Paiva family he knew as a child, I'm Still Here takes place in Rio De Janeiro from late 1970 under Brazil's dictatorial regime. Salles takes his time to establish the bustling domesticity and fills the scenes with banter and laughter. Rubens and Eunice have busy lives. He's an engineer and a former congressman. She's a devoted mother looking after five children. Their house is a welcome space of music, friends, parties, table soccer, a new puppy and the ruckus between five siblings.

And yet lurking in a background is a feeling of unease. Some of their friends are packing up to leave, fearing the worst for their country's future. While Rubens and Eunice decide to stay, they're sending their eldest daughter Vera away to attend college in London.

One morning, armed plainclothes officials take Rubens away “for questioning”. After Rubens fails to come home, Eunice tries to find out what has happened but gets herself locked up and interrogated for 12 days, still denied any information about her husband.

Rubens Paiva was only one of thousands who were “disappeared” during this dark chapter in Brazil's recent history under the authoritarian military rule. Many would never be seen again, their bodies buried in mass graves and their families left with a sudden loss.

What stands out most vividly from this movie is the stoic performance by Fernanda Torres. The quietly distraught wife and mother is targeted and intimidated by the authorities in her pursuit of the truth. Even after her release, she's always being watched, constantly having to look over her shoulder or in the rearview mirror to see which car is following her.

Eunice is vulnerable and lives in fear but she hides it from her kids, lying to them that dad will come home one day. She makes sacrifices and is eventually forced to sell their home and move the family to start a new life in Sau Paulo. The actress doesn't make Eunice a damsel in distress; neither does she elevate Eunice to the stature of a martyr or folk hero. She comes across simply as a wife and mother, not an activist, advocate or revolutionary.

Eunice has accepted the fact that Rubens is dead but she wants the government to own up. Rubens will always remain a missing person until the government admits to their part in his disappearance and death. The widow's persistence finally results in a concrete acknowledgement when Ruben's death certificate is issued, 25 years later.

I'm Still Here is a clear-eyed, unsentimental account of one woman's unwavering quest through the decades to protect her family and force the government to admit publicly what they did to her husband. The film is as much historical as it is personal. Based on the biography written by Marcelo, Eunice's son and a childhood friend of the director, Salles hasn't made a censuring critique on the country but more of a tribute to Eunice and a family with whom he spent time in his childhood.

Eunice's internalised grief, the pain of not knowing and not having answers or closure give the film its poignancy and raison d'etre. The intimate and personal touch makes I'm Still Here, a title that's at once defiant and comforting, a deeply humanistic and heartfelt film.

By the time we come to the movie's end, the loss experienced by the family is conveyed strikingly with the final shots of empty rooms. More expressive and purposeful than a mere credit roll, the sight of the vacant Paiva home evokes the emptiness left in the lives of those mourning the tens of thousands of people who were imprisoned, tortured or disappeared in their resistance of anti-democratic rule.

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