‘I’m nonetheless right here’, the Brazilian cinematographic phenomenon that revives the trauma of the dictatorship in cinemas | EUROtoday

The solely one of many candidates for finest drama actress on the Golden Globes who might calmly stroll by the streets of Los Angeles, and half the planet, with out anybody paying an excessive amount of consideration to her, received final Sunday. Brazilian Fernanda Torres, 59 years previous, protagonist of I’m Still Here (I’m Still Here), which tells the true story of the spouse of a lacking man from the dictatorship, took glory by beating a quintet of the caliber of Kate Winslet, Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie, Tilda Swinton and Pamela Anderson.

Brazil celebrated this award in type, unprecedented within the nationwide document, for a movie that has develop into a phenomenon in cinemas. Three million viewers have seen this movie in Brazil in two months, which seems to be at a trauma from the previous that resonates strongly as we speak, with the second anniversary of the Bolsonaro assault on the guts of energy in Brasilia and the investigation into the coup towards former President Jair. Bolsonaro, a former soldier nostalgic for the dictatorship.

I’m nonetheless right hereby filmmaker Walter Salles, premiered on the Venice Film Festival in 2024, the sixtieth anniversary of the navy coup carried out within the identify of anti-communism. He inaugurated the awards season there, with the award for finest script. It then went by the San Sebastián Festival and can hit Spanish cinemas on February 25. For Brazilians who lived by the occasions of the president-generals (1964-1985), the movie permits them to revisit that trauma; For those that weren’t but born, it’s an invite to look again on the years of lead, which Bolsonaro relativizes. One day final December, on the finish of the screening in a central São Paulo cinema, the viewers burst into applause and a gaggle of younger feminine spectators stood up and chanted “Dictatorship, never again!”.

None had been born in 1971, when the movie begins. The lawyer Eunice Paiva (performed by Fernanda Torres) and the deputy Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), by then already faraway from workplace by the navy, lead an idyllic life at first look with their 5 kids in a fantastic home in entrance of the seashore, in Rio de Janeiro. As if the dictatorship have been a actuality from one other galaxy. The protagonist is unaware of her husband’s clandestine actions. Until at some point the repression hits them with full pressure when some civilians burst into their peaceable lifetime of bathing within the sea, events with associates and going out to eat as a household to arrest the couple and one in all their daughters.

The movie, primarily based on the autobiography of a Paiva son, tells the story from his mom’s perspective. He started writing it when he realized that each Eunice, affected by Alzheimer’s, and Brazil have been starting to fall into forgetfulness.

Shot in a mode classicis harking back to the Super 8 recordings of that point. The story hyperlinks the lawyer’s wrestle to find her husband with the battle to lift her household till it culminates in how she reinvents herself as a combative defender of the rights of these disappeared from the dictatorship and of the indigenous folks. The criticism of Variety He described it as a “deeply moving portrait of the sensory memory of a family—and a nation—shattered.”

Torres received the Golden Globe because of her efficiency and a shock as a result of the function of Eunice solely got here to her after the resignation of one other actress. He devoted the award to his mom, Fernanda Montenegro, 95 years previous, the good Brazilian girl of performing who 1 / 4 of a century in the past received the identical award because the protagonist of Brazil Central Stationadditionally directed by Walter Salles. That movie missed the Oscar.

That’s why the awards for the movie and for Torres style so candy in his land and in his household. The revered Fernanda Montenegro performs the aged Eunice, a quick function by which she acts solely along with her eyes. After awarding her daughter, the matriarch recalled how tough it’s for artists who create under the Equator line to have their expertise internationally acknowledged within the north.

Political, however contained

The calendar needed this Golden Globe to reach on the anniversary of the assault on the Capitol in Washington, and two days after the anniversary of the Brasilia assault. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva skillfully turned the movie into one of many nice references within the occasion organized to recollect the assault of January 8, 2023. “We are still here,” the leftist president proudly proclaimed when defending democracy, dialogue with the dissenters and the punishment of the responsible.

Although the theme of the movie is clearly political, it maintains a contained tone. It is “a story told in a non-pamphlet way that moves and teaches,” based on the editorialist of The Globejournalistic arm of the Globo group, co-producer of the movie. Marcelo Rubens Paiva, creator of the unique e-book I’m Still Herehas emphasised that the 2014 Truth Commission was essential to reconstructing the darkest chapter in household historical past.

nation of dynasties

Reflection of the extent to which Brazil is a rustic of dynasties, the duo of Fernandas, Torres and Montenegro. The first has managed to shine on her personal deserves, carve out her personal profession and be acknowledged professionally with out being overshadowed by the distinctive expertise of the matriarch. Less is alleged in regards to the origin of director Walter Salles. Consecrated and multi-awarded with titles reminiscent of motorbike diaries (2004) o Foreign Land (1995), has a wealthy household. The fortune he inherited way back positioned him among the many world’s richest filmmakers and Brazilians with companies within the banking and mining sectors. One of his brothers, João Moreira Salles, based the journal Piauíand New Yorker Brazilian, whereas a 3rd brother, Pedro, presides over the Itaú financial institution.

Although Brazil is huge and really populated, it isn’t stunning that the filmmaker Salles knew the Paiva all his life, however the paths of some folks cross in stunning methods. Bolsonaro, who’s being investigated by the justice system for plotting a coup try, grew up in Eldorado (São Paulo), a metropolis the place the Paiva owned many lands, a household farm and the place the daddy of the deputy who disappeared from the movie was mayor. Narrated Portraita sound profile of the previous president (with a Spanish model), reveals the obsession and resentment that the teenage Bolsonaro had in direction of the Paiva and the way he determined to enlist within the Army after witnessing a spectacular operation within the metropolis to catch probably the most needed guerrilla of the second .

Although the Truth Commission identified the culprits, it didn’t punish them. Five troopers have been denounced for the homicide of deputy Paiva, however the processes didn’t finish. Three have already died. But his heirs and the 2 who’re nonetheless dwelling proceed to obtain their pensions, which price the Union 22,000 euros monthly, as found by ICL Notícias on the Transparency Portal following the success of the Brazilian movie of the second.