After 12-year hiatus from fiction feature filmmaking, Brazilian director Walter Salles has made a critical acclaimed and popular film, the drama I’m Still Here.
Fernanda Torres stars as Eunice Paiva, a real-life figure whose husband Rubens Paiva, an architect and left-wing politician, disappeared in 1973, in the early years of Brazil’s military dictatorship. She is joined by Selton Mello as Rubens.
The movie premiered at the 2024 Venice Fest, where co-writers Heitor Lorega and Murilo Hauser earned Best Screenplay.
The movie has been on a festival tour since, winning four audience awards along the way.
The biggest prize for the Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries director Salles, however, has been the movie’s reception in Brazil, where it has taken the top slot at the box office over such Hollywood blockbusters as Wicked and Gladiator II.
“It’s a fever now,” Salles said. “The beauty of this is the fact that the cinemas are completely full with people from different generations: kids of 15, 18, 20, and then the parents of those kids and the grandparents of those kids.”
He added: “It’s somehow emulating what that house of the Paivas was. All generations were congregating in that house, and it pulsated with life. And strangely, the cinemas are replicating this 45 years later. Almost every single screening has been full, including on Mondays and Tuesdays. … That is an incredible gift.”
The film reunites Salles with Torres for a third time after their collaborations on Strange Land (1995) and The First Day (1998).
Torres said she was an admirer of Paiva even before Salles approached her for the role, having read the 2015 book Ainda Estou Aqui by her son Marcelo Rubens Paiva, on which the film is based.
