It may be axiomatic, but it is still profound: our sense of self is determined by the accumulation of our memories. This is why science fiction has become obsessed with the idea of technologies that can delete or alter memory, and thus the memory holder. This is why it is so devastating to watch a loved one lose their memories, becoming someone else in the process.
This is true on a broader level as well. Societies, after all, are just groups of people who share memories. Filmmakers around the world, but especially from South American countries, seem particularly attuned to this fact lately. They suggest that you can reshape the character of a group of people by disrupting collective memory, and that this is why governments are often keen to look back. In the last few years, popular movies like “Azure“”The Eternal Memory“and”Argentina, 1985I explore the personal impact of mass disappearances under military dictatorships. Chili And Argentina. More broadly, they show how efforts to ignore these disappearances have lasting effects on those who survive.
The beautiful, catchy “I’m Still Here” joins them with its own story, set in Brazil. Directed by Walter Salles, one of the country’s most celebrated filmmakers, “I’m Still Here” is based on the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, whose father, Congressman Rubens Paiva, An estimated 20,000 people were among them. They were tortured during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.
Expertly produced and richly shot, “I’m Still Here” opens in 1970s Rio de Janeiro when, despite the military’s intrusion on daily life, the large, loving Paiva family largely survives. Living in domestic bliss. Robbins (Selton Milo) has recently returned home from six years of self-imposed exile, after being ousted from government during the Revolution. He and his wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), have five children, four daughters and one son, ranging in age from grade school to teenagers. They live near the beach, entertain friends, dance in the living room and have a happy, bustling home. Rubens is still working to support political émigrés, but he keeps his activities out of sight of his family.
One day, however, the couple’s daughter Vera (Valentina Herzej) is stopped and searched by authorities on her way home from a movie with friends. Soon after, news breaks that leftist activists have kidnapped the Swiss ambassador, starting a period of instability that escalates rapidly. When the men show up at Paiva’s house, demanding Rubens to accompany them to an undisclosed location for questioning, Jonah and the kids realize something is up. Robbins does not return. And then Yunus and his daughter Eliana (Louisa Kosowski) are also brought in for questioning.
This is the moment when the film turns to Yunus, who is not only the heroine of the film but also in real life. This film is her story: she is a woman whose life has been torn apart, deciding that she will not be afraid. Not only will she live a life of immense, oppressive hardship for her children, but she will also throw herself into changing the world. In his performance – which Won a Golden Globe. And aiming for an Oscar nomination — Torres stunned. Protecting your children means leaning into joy in the midst of fear, hope in the midst of pain. Torres doubles her performance with all these emotions, and her searching eyes are magnetic.
But this is not just a film about a strong woman, although it certainly is. It’s also about what authoritarian regimes do to keep people in line, the totalitarian tactic of making people doubt that they know what they’ve seen by insisting on absurd lies. It’s not as if someone entered Paiva’s home with a gun and handcuffs — although Robbins’ privileged status as a former elected lawmaker and public figure suggests it had something to do with it.
Rather, control comes through mind games and gaslighting, by denying the simple truth that the family can see before their eyes. Official government claims that Robbins escaped from prison are patently false (it took until 2014 for anyone to be charged with his death), and the family is left in limbo. It’s infuriating to see, even more so because it actually happened, and not just to Pivas.
“I’m Still Here” stretches its story across decades, tracing the long line of disappearances and their impact on the country, even as some people prefer to move on, from those people’s pasts. To forget the atrocities that are no longer in power. . When a reporter asks Yunus if they shouldn’t be focusing on more pressing issues than “fixing the past,” she vehemently disagrees. The families must receive compensation for the crimes, but more importantly, the country needs to “clarify and judge all the crimes committed during the dictatorship,” she insists. “If that doesn’t happen, they will continue to be committed with impunity.”
“I’m Still Here” was released in November 2024 in Brazil. Despite this Far-right campaigns People have been appealed to boycott the film. A huge hitThe highest-grossing Brazilian film in the country since the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have noted that the film was a hit in a country that—unlike Chile and Argentina—did not pursue official accountability for the military’s role in torturing and killing civilians during the dictatorship. The film was also released in the same way. Details of the planned coup emerged To keep former president Jair Bolsonaro in power, defending the military dictatorship, after his defeat in the 2022 elections.
So the popularity of the film is not a mystery. Yet “I’m Still Here” does not present itself as a simple discussion of the historical and political situation, and that is the secret of its universal appeal. It is also a moving picture of how politics disrupts and reshapes the domestic sphere, and how solidarity, community and love are the only viable ways to survive in tragedy. And it warns us to distrust anyone who tries to erase or rewrite the past. Throughout the story, Sales repeatedly shows the family shooting photos and the Super 8 film that preserves their memories. The director said. that films are “devices against forgetting, and that he believes that” cinema reconstructs memory. With “I’m Still Here,” he wants to make sure no one forgets.
I’m still here
Rated PG-13 for scenes of life under a dictatorship, including sounds of violence. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 16 minutes. In theaters.