I’m Still Here
Directed by Walter Salles
Written by Murilo Hauser, Heitor Lorega, and Marcelo Rubens Paiva
Starring Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, and Antonio Saboia
Rated PG-13
Runtime: 2 hour and 15 minutes
In Select Theaters

by Jonathan Jansen, Staff Writer

Together at a party, friends and family gather for a photo on the beach. It’s easy for everyone to smile after a day of food, music, and dancing with one another. The photo is taken and it’s one of joy and celebration. As the photo is being taken, Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres)  gets a glimpse of a military vehicle in a black, full of soldiers in all black, driving by the beach where they are taking the photo. It’s an ominous feeling that Eunice, and Brazil, could not shake. Still, all Eunice can do is look into the camera and smile.

I’m Still Here opens on a day at the beach in 1970. There are teenagers playing an intense game of volleyball, kids finding a lost dog and trying to adopt it, and a mother in the ocean finding quiet peace in the water. It feels like the start of a fun summer movie for Eunice and her five kids. There are celebrations, laughter, excitement for things like the building of a new house. The Paiva family, once exiled because of the father, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former congressman, has now become an almost picture perfect family building a beautiful life in Rio de Janeiro. In the background of all of these moments is a large military presence. Other than the daughter having a brief run in with the military at a checkpoint, the threat of military rule is at a distance, but noticeably present. At this time, Brazil was under a strict military dictatorship. Initially, I’m Still Here doesn’t treat the military presence as something to run and hide from, but instead simply acknowledging their occupancy. The Paiva family, especially their mother Eunice Paiva, hopes the military doesn’t come for them. 

Eventually the military does come after Rubens, quietly arresting him. The Paivas go days without seeing him, only for Eunice and one of her daughters to be brought in for questioning as well. Eunice spends days there, trying to answer questions that she has no answers to. She eventually arrives home fatigued and dirty after sitting in a prison cell for nearly a month. 

This is just the start of the Paivas’ lives being turned upside down by Brazil’s military dictatorship. They constantly live in fear and anxiety, and are waiting to hear from their missing father. What was once a joyful family is now clinging onto any hope of finding that happiness again. It’s the focus on the Paiva family that brings together a complete picture of the terrors of that time. People constantly go missing, censorship leaves them in the dark of what’s going on, and the helplessness of not being able to fight back. The Paiva family dealt with all of it, and what could have easily become a sensationalized and dramatized film, is instead firmly grounded by following how this family was affected.

After her husband is taken away, Eunice becomes the primary driving force of the film. Her battle to uncover what happened to her husband initially feels like it’s going nowhere, which slows the film down a bit. It’s what Eunice becomes that is the most fascinating part and it’s in large part to the depth Fernanda Torres brings to the character. Eunice doesn’t become a stoic heroic activist, she feels every bit of her situation. The despair and vulnerability, but also she must decide to battle the larger forces despite that. It’s a necessity to do that for her children. When she is approached by media that want to document her story to bring to the public, the publications editor asks the family to take a photo. By request, the editor wants a photo of the family looking sad. Eunice goes against that request instead deciding to have her and her family look into the camera and smile. Revolting against a greater force isn’t just going after them. In many cases, like this one, it was impossible to do anything. Eunice knew at the time there was nothing she could do to get revenge or stop them. All they could do was continue to live as a loving family and smile into the camera as they did previously on the beach. Again, the film doesn’t devolve into melodrama, but instead wants you to feel the weight of Eunice’s decisions and how she had to handle all of her family’s hardships. 

When traumatic societal events are brought up from the past, it can feel distant. I was born in 1994, so something that happened in 1970 feels so far away. I’m Still Here effectively shows how trauma doesn’t stay in the past. Instead, it can still be felt decades later. Eunice isn’t able to close a chapter of her life until decades later. When her children bring up past memories, even ones initially good, they are now hazy and only bring back the painful memories that followed. The events that happened to them don’t go away but instead stick with them forever. It’s only until a newer generation is born that there starts to be a sense of healing. That it starts to finally feel as though they’re removed from it all. 

It’s not hard to feel the threat, the weight, of what it was like for families in Brazil at the time of the military dictatorship. I’m Still Here avoids overt sensationalism by centering its attention on the hardships that the Paiva family had to grapple with. There was no way they could overpower the evil they faced. What they could do was look into a new lens, smile, and continue to keep on living.

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