A ten-minute standing ovation. That was the audience’s reaction after watching the premiere of the new feature film by director Walter Salles, “I Am Still Here,” starring well-known actors Fernanda Torres and Selton Mello, during the Venice Film Festival last weekend.
The official release of the film in Brazil or the United States has not yet been announced.
The Brazilian dictatorship on the big screen
“I Am Still Here” is set in Brazil in 1970 and is an adaptation of the autobiographical book by Marcelo Rubens Paiva about his mother, Eunice Paiva.
On January 20, 1971, engineer and former federal deputy (PTB) Rubens Paiva, deposed by the military dictatorship, was taken from his home in Leblon, Rio de Janeiro, by military agents to “give testimony.”
He told his family he would return soon. He was tortured and killed by the regime. His remains were never found.
The life before and after this pivotal event led his son Marcelo Rubens Paiva to write “I Am Still Here” (2015).
In the plot, Eunice Paiva (played by Torres in her youth and Fernanda Montenegro in her old age), mother of five children, has her life turned upside down after the kidnapping, imprisonment, and disappearance of her husband (Selton Mello). She is forced to reinvent herself and chart a new course for herself and her children.
‘I Am Still Here’ gains relevance by addressing a dark period in Brazil’s history, the years of dictatorship, which continue to mobilize ideas and people.
“Proposing more reflections on this period seems vital to better understand the trauma experienced and to avoid repeating the same mistakes of the past,” said Walter Salles to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
Source: Folha de São Paulo