Thanks to everyone from Brazil checking out our review of the film! And we appreciate those of you adding context to the story that we were lacking at the time of recording. It's great to see so much passion behind this film when we felt little of that when it premiered in Venice. Especially for an International audience this movie can be a starting point to catch up on history blind spots - which some of you are fairly calling out in the comments. For our background, we aren't from the USA but Switzerland and Belgium respectively. And for me personally (Ewan), this horrific time period in Brazil, Argentina & other South American has only ever been covered outside of the classroom in film form. Which is disappointing to say the least for what it says about European history education. But it's something I will educate myself on further, before this film hopefully gets an Oscar nomination and more International attention so the discourse opens up more about the USA's involvement in all of this. - Ewan
You don’t need to apologize, people are kinda hypocrite, I’m pretty sure most brazilians wouldn’t know historical facts of Belgium and Switzerland (we don’t really study your countries in Brazil either, for example a lot of people sometimes mix up facts from Switzerland with Sweden because the spelling in portuguese is very similar (Suíça and Suécia)) We just get passionate about it because it is still an open wound for us, it’s fairly recent, our parents and grandparents lived through the military dictatorship and its horrors but somehow our political scenario with Bolsonaro a few years ago had several people asking for a military intervention again, so this type of movie is a reminder for us to not let this happen. NEVER AGAIN. To remember is to resist.
This relates to US politics as well. Condor operation was a campaign to support dictatorships all over South America and caused the death of deputy Rubens Paiva, among many many others.
I watched this film last sunday. IMO the greatest thing this did was not going into showing explicity what our dictatorship did, it focused more on the family and on what Eunice was going through. They could showed some torture scene to hit us like a brick, but they went for something melancholic that grows as the movie goes. Really good movie.
You see the movie as a family drama (it's also a family drama) because you have no notion of general history (and that's ok… no problem). It is a film about one of the most terrible moments in the recent history of Brazil, the military dictatorship, by the way this regime sponsored by the US. About the Oscar, well, I think this award is very cheesy. But it brings visibility to the productions so let's go.
@@carlosmauricioardissone4736 Yes, this is the strength of the movie. Show the horrors of the dictatorship through a family drama. But you agree that this drama is very specific to this context (of a political regime of dictatorship), right? So, I believe that this point is not peaceful for discussion. 😘
@sarahcintra1 What I meant to say is that it was a smart option to leave the dictatorship as a backdrop, otherwise it would have become an air of historical didacticism that would take the dramatic focus away from the story of Eunice and her family. I think that anyone who sees the film and wants to know more about the dictatorship can look for documentaries and other sources. But I believe we are on the same point, we do not disagree.
Brazilians already know the horrors of the dictatorship, we know what the torture was like, the modus operandi of the military, but very little is said about the thousands of victims, their families and their stories that were taken away by this time of terror, it makes perfect sense to see what Eunice saw, what she went through, not the context, it's her story, and her family's
the thing is this story is very famous in brazil, it’s part of history. And because, for me, it is a movie for brazilians, not for foreigners, it really makes sense to focus on Eunice and her family. So people from outside of Brazil can just search more about it and learn about our country 😉
For those who wanted more of the movie, we have the books! One of the kids, Marcelo, is the author. He wrote Feliz Ano Velho (Happy Old Year) about his accident and about how his childhood was with the missing of his father and later he wrote Ainda estou aqui (I am still here) about his mom and what she had gone through
So... Walter Salles, shows a family drama, but not just from the outside... He knows that story from the inside, because when he was 13 years old, he was a close friend to one of the Eunice daughters, so he frequented that house, he was part of that story and knew every corner of the house that mean so much for that family.
Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here) is the daughter of Fernanda Montenegro (Central Station). Walter Salles directed both movies. About the background and the character "wondering", well, Brazil also wondered for decades what had happened to Rubens Paiva, although everybody knew he was kidnapped and murdered under torture by the military. But the military never admitted they did it, and never had the decency to say where his body was. Those were really tough and dark times in Brazil.
The movie is based on a book written by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, a writter and the son of Rubens Paiva (it would be nice if, considering the international release of this movie, they translated the book to english and spanish so people from other countries could read it too). So it focuses more on the psychological and family life aspects of this story because of that, because it is based on the book of someone who lived the dissapearance of his father, but did not know then what was actually happening with his father. I do understand, though, the criticism for the movie not showing more of the political and practical context behind Rubens' murder by the military dictatorship, as y'all don't know the history of Brazil's military dictatorship (much less, of the role of the US in sponsoring and in giving intelligence and operative aid to stablish many military dictatorships throughout latin america in the 20th century). However, I think it is not the purpose of the movie to make you learn more about the history of the brazilian military dictatorship, rather to show the interpersonal effects it had on people here. And, through that, make the audience connect with this family and this mother, which would make some people interested in learning more about the history. Also, as another commentator cleverly put it, it gives a personal representation of the lack of knowing the military dictatorship subjected its people to. And it also is a way of honoring the memory of Rubens and of his wife Eunice, not focusing only on the ways they were victimized by the military dictatorship, but rather focusing on who they actually were as people. If you wanna learn more about the history of the military dictatorship, I would reccomend starting with the documentary The Day That Lasted 21 Years (it's avaible on TH-cam, it's mostly in english with some portuguese parts that I think one could use the auto-translate of the captions to try to understand: th-cam.com/video/4ajnWz4d1P4/w-d-xo.htmlsi=4ztSb80alOdzdjqL ). Other brazilian movies that take place during the brazilian military dictatorship that I highly recomend watching are: Twenty Years Later (1986, og title: Cabra Marcado Para Morrer), Zuzu Angel (2006), Marighella (2019, and the 2012 documentary is very good also), The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2006, og title: O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias), Four Days in September (1997, og title: O Que é Isso, Companheiro?) and the documentary about the story told in the previous movie, which I reccomend even more than the movie itself, Hércules 56 (2006). I don't know how you'd be able to stream those movies in foreign countries (like, where to find them) and which ones are avaible with english subtitles, but it's definitely worth it to search for those movies! There are more, of course, but those are the ones I remember right now.
Thank you for the recommendations! Exactly, that's the best thing a movie like this can do: nudging you to read up on history. Thank you for commenting! I added the films you mentioned to a list on Letterboxd here: boxd.it/Aod4y Let us know if any others come to mind & should be added. - Ewan
I always like to remember about "City of God" film. It shows another side of our dictatorship, the complete lack of care to those in need. The film starts with a lot of migrants tryng to flee from hungry that slay more than 2 milions in few years comming to Rio (and São Paulo). And as that abandon continues, violence and drug dealers just rises more and more.
It is interesting to note that "The Year My Parents went on Vacation" is directed by Cao Hamburguer and is based on the story of his family, too, his parents were University teachers and had to stay away during some time due to political prosecution, so they left the kids with their grand parents.
You have no idea how intensely this movie hit me and tbh everyone who was in that cinema with me. I was crying from the moment Eunice came home from the police station and i only stopped once i got back home, well after the movie had ended. To give you some personal context, my mom's family lived in a nearby neighbourhood from the one shown in the movie, also next to the beach, also in the 70s; they went to that same bookstore, that same beach point, they knew people from that school; she was the youngest of four (about the same age ranges as the kids from the movie) and was in the choir at her school and her siblings became engineers and my grandma was a stay at home mom and they had a little bit of land far from the city where my grandpa built a house; and my uncle acts exactly like Selton Mello's interpretation of Rubens Paiva in some scenes (and people keep saying my uncle acts a lot like my grandpa, who quit the military police as soon as he could before the dictotorship even started because he was against their ideology) and my mom tells me there were always people coming in and out of the house and- it's so close. Do you see how close this was. It could've been my family instead, just as easily, just like it *was* many other families as well at the time. They all look like what people from my family look like in pictures, they wear the same clothes and they talk the same way they did in the few home movies we have left. My mom still has some of those vinyls that appeared in the movie, that she inherited from her brothers at the time. I understand you wanting more context and focus on Paive himself but we learn about what happened to him at school; the strength of this movie was how much we feel like it could be us there, how real the family and their reactions feel. You can't tell the youngest what happened, you can't speak about it with anyone, you always have to look over your shoulder, you don't know who to trust. And you might never get closure. They arrested Paiva and made some careless mistake and covered up that he died and the family was destabilised but they had to go on and that's exactly what my grandma would've done if it was my grandpa. It was such a realistic and devastating depiction of what happened, and that's what makes it so powerful. It doesn't exaggerate or take advantage of the pain, the gore, the violence to elicit emotions because the reality itself is enough, and we already KNOW all that happened. The horror of the situation wasn't just what happened to him, but that the families are left wandering. We don't know what happened to him, it would be insincere to speculate or turn it into a spectacle; but we do know that the families were left to pick up the pieces and keep fighting however they could, without risking endangering themselves even more. And then to keep living and make happy lived for themselves, without ever being able to bury their loves ones. Anyways, thank you for reviewing it! Sorry for the long comment, i just feel like maybe there's a lot that's lost in translation here
brasillians have a lot more context and that elevates the movie, we are hyper aware of the level of torture and brutality going on in the background, knowing that the characters can’t see or know, not being explicitly shown but haunting the movie like a ghost
Uma coisa a considerar é que Walter Salles é um cineasta interessado no Brasil. Assim foi "Central Station" ["Central do Brasil" no original], com uma viagem ao coração do país, ao sertão [backlands], para lidar com os contrastes de um país que buscava se modernizar. Com "Ainda estou aqui", ele refaz esse caminho ao examinar a modernização conservadora brasileira, mas num contexto urbano e de classe média a partir de um dos casos mais famosos de desaparecidos durante a ditadura. Boa a referência ao "Missing", belíssimo filme. Espero que leve um Oscar para exorcizar os fantasmas do cinema brasileiro e fazer justiça ao Oscar perdido por Fernanda Montenegro para a Gwyneth Paltrow naquele esquecível "Shakespeare apaixonado".
As for the film leaving something to be desired, from what I understand analysts would like to see images of perhaps what happened to the politician in prison. This would certainly show torture and death. But the film was not about that, but about the wife and her family. The director's objective is not to expose torture and barbarity, but to focus on the beautiful family, making the viewer feel part of it. I was born in 1972, and when I saw the film I had the feeling of being part of that family. And when that happens, the script brings the viewer closer to the story. It creates a feeling of empathy in the viewer.
These were such superficial comments. It’s about a family drama, but it is also much more than that. It’s about thousand ppl stories that had someone who was abducted by the militaries; It’s about a moment in history that we all study in schools here in South America and we grow afraid that it’ll happen someday again; it is about a regime that attacked everyone, even a successful civil engineer and ex politician that gave support to “enemies” of the government. You guys should be more aware about world’s History
Without the slightest doubt, one of the best films of all time. Fernanda Montegro only needed 2 seconds of screen time to make a full theater cry and Fernanda Torres delivers one of the most brilliant works an actress could do. An extremely necessary film to not leave the past forgotten and remind us that the fight for and maintenance of democracy must be constant.
No problem being a family drama. It IS a family drama and that's how people may connect with the story even if they don't know nothing about brasil, ditactorships, etc.
If anyone here want to see a more explicit film about brazillian dictatorship I really recommend a movie called Blood Baptism. It is HEAVY. But necessary.
The major aspect of the movie is memory, aside from the excelent family drama and historical context. Kinda meta in a way, surrounding the importance of proper registration and remembrance of history, so the horrors don't repeat themselves. No wonder it revolves around super 8 shots, music, photos, the pain of getting an official document confirming her husband's fate. In a sense Fernanda also represents brazilian society's way of viewing the US imposed fascist dictatorship. After redemocratization, in the 90's, her memory starts to fade. In 2014, she has alzheimer's. Around 2014/16 we had another coup on a democratically elected president (who fought against the dictatorship, was tortured in the 70s etc), in 2018 Brazil elected an openly fascist pro military dictatorship president. But the movie does give hope, the documentation on TV about the dictatorship revives her memory for a bit. The title I'm Still Here is also a metaphor for the brazilian audience. We are still here with the danger of fascism and another military coup on the corner.
More than a cinematographic work, the film is a tribute and a denunciation. It exposes, in a raw and direct way, the brutality of repression, torture and persecution during the military dictatorship, reminding the public of the importance of keeping the memory of these dark times alive. Especially in current times, where speeches in support of dictatorship and historical revisionism are gaining strength, films like I'm Still Here have an essential role in preserving and honoring history and the victims of this state violence. Having done my TCC on the work of photographer Evandro Teixeira, who documented repression and became an icon of resistance against the dictatorship, I recognize in the film the same urgency in preserving memories and echoing silenced voices. I'm Still Here is, without a doubt, one of the most striking films of the year, a corrosive testimony to our history, and a constant reminder that silent lives must be remembered so that we never forget what was done.
This film focuses on the tragedy of the Paiva family to remember the tragedy in which the entire country was thrown into military dictatorship. In the end it shows the protagonist's loss of memory (which was real) which is also a metaphor for Brazil's loss of memory in relation to its recent history. The plague of dictatorship almost returned two years ago. I'm still here is an example of cinema as a historical record for new generations.
If u like "Im Still Here" and want to know more about Brazil's dictatorship through cinema, i really recommend you to watch "Marighella". An excellent movie, directed by Wagner Moura, just as raw as "Im still here", but based on a much more violent set of events related to Marighella. Marighella was also a former polititian like Rubens Paiva, and he is known as a real legend in Brazil to have taken a path of direct resistance to the regime.
I was born in Brazil during those horrible times, so I'm older than the democratic Statehood of my country, which in itself is so crazy. Without a doubt, I wish my fellow Americans to make means to find a theater wherein this movie is available; it is a hard and cruel portrait of our childhood and gives a real illustration of living in a country that embraces the "going after the enemy from within" rhetoric.
Some mounths ago, we had many brazilians asking for military intervention or returning of dictatorship. Its awful to think we could be living these days again nowadays! This film is not only a drama, but also an horror picture for us!
The movie is based in a book of Marcelo Rubens Paiva. Basically, his entire work is about the loss of his father and this one is centered on his mother.
The film has a tone of hints to deeper comversations, references in music and places, as a brazilian memoir, made for brazilians to remember, maybe thats why foreigners can't see deeper meanings... for example, at the end she's arranging the newspapers cut outs, it shows briefly a headline of a case, a university rector who was ilegally abducted by the police force in 2016 and released later without any explanations, resulting in his suicide a few months later. Also, we do have a bunch of movies that displays the dictatorship, bloody scenes, political conspiracies... none of them reach the popularity of this one. People are move by it because its so easy to relate and feel their grief.
Honestly, even the happy part was gut wrenching to me (and probably to a lot of brazilians) because all I could do was wonder when time would be up. I feel focusing on the complexities of the dictatorship would complicate things too much. As it wasn’t made specifically for an international audience as means of education, it’s understandable. Everyone here knows the regime and what they did. Even if someone didn’t know Rubens Paiva by name, they knew from the minute he was taken what would happen. He wasn’t coming back. Even when he says to his friend “this wont last youll be back and will reopen your book store”, we knew he was wrong. It was 1970, six years in and 15 to go. And having Selton to portray such a dear husband, father, friend, it only made us dread more the inevitability of his death. To think the happiest moment of the movie was a wife getting her husband’s death certificate 25 years after he died. A time longer than their marriage. All that time, walking knowing he died horribly but not being able to have this acknowledged. And knowing his murderers were free, and their families whole. No consequences for them, just for this family left broken because their father wanted to defend everyone’s rights.
I completely understand you guys wanting more of a background and for the movie to explore the dictatorship more, but its not about untouched potential, its a sensible choice. PLEASE, just give it a search. Movies are great for learning stuff, but how much time would it cost to research a bit of Brazil’s dictatorship? I guarantee you it would intensify the emotions you feel through the movie tenfold.
The point of this movie is precisely the understatement of terrible things, that's what moves the audiences around the world so deeply and intensely 😉 I'm Brazilian too btw and was a college student of one of Eunice's daughters
I wonder about something deeper, which is the relevance of the Oscars in today's world. We know that the issue is more commercial than artistic. Nor is it about pleasing an American audience. So why do we pay so much attention to this kind of thing? Not even America cares about this anymore. It's pathetic, but anyway, things are the way they are. I'm happy to know that both Fernanda Torres and Walter Salles keep their feet firmly on the ground, even though they're marathoning around the world, answering the same questions from journalists, doing what everyone else does. In addition, there is a more controversial element behind the military coups in Latin America, which is basically the backdrop to this story, which is the participation of the American government, instigating and sponsoring these conflicts. Nothing has changed. Trump is there to prove it. Good luck Americans.
There are several inconsistencies in this video, but one point that may address some of the criticisms is that the movie is a biopic, staying true to the biographical book it’s based on. The film intentionally does not go beyond being a family drama-it was a deliberate creative choice. However, the deeper significance lies in the fact that the torturers and other military officials from Brazil's dictatorship era were never held accountable for their crimes. They even recently attempted another coup against our democracy. This lingering impunity and enduring presence of these figures are encapsulated in the title, "I'm Still Here", waiting to be judged and punished.
The dictatorships in South America are big part of the hatred/love relation we have with the US. Learn about the woes your country made possible in the past.
What you criticize is the great success of the film, subtext... It is not a film simply about the dictatorship, like so many, it is a film about absence and memory. It runs so much deeper. Why are americans so shallow?
Family drama? Go learn some history that’s not from your own country before talking about a production that explicitly takes place during one of its darkest periods
Are you kidding? Although the film focuses on the family of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, author of the book of the same name, it is a story that EVERY SINGLE BRAZILIAN experienced, it is about the military dictatorship. Go study history without studying the US, because wanting to depreciate a film like this is absurd.
It's crazy how this was pushed when nobody in Brazil watched or cared for it, just based on having Fernanda Montenegro(Central Station and that's its) and her daughter Fernanda Torres( nepo baby that had a free ride on TV because of her mother all her life) working together with Walter Salles(suspiciously involved in every relevant Brazilian movie in the last 30 years and his brothers are huge bankers by coincidence), all three from Rio, deeply related to Globo and really rich people that some might call the Brazilian royalty or mafia. Ironically, the movie depicts a military dictatorship in Brazil and is portrayed by people who benefited greatly from said dictatorship and were financially backed by the Globo group that also supported the military dictatorship Great story but all in all this was probably just a gift from Fernanda Montenegro to her not so talented daughter flexing her influence to birth this project and award submissions
I could recommend 3 other AMAZING BRAZILIAN FILMS on the subject: 1) Zuzu Angel (She was a famous fashion designer and the dictatorship took her son. She uses fashion and her contacts with important people around the world to give voice to her pain), 2) Marighela (he was a military man who was against the dictatorship and he uses his military knowledge to train civilian fighters against the army) 3) Batismo de Sangue / Baptisms of Blood (Catholic priests are tortured because they start saving and hiding people from the dictatorship... it's a very explicit film about torture and I never finished this film because of that)
![แฉกลโกงงานวัด 2024 [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.106 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/taC5dpP3HXA/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks to everyone from Brazil checking out our review of the film! And we appreciate those of you adding context to the story that we were lacking at the time of recording. It's great to see so much passion behind this film when we felt little of that when it premiered in Venice. Especially for an International audience this movie can be a starting point to catch up on history blind spots - which some of you are fairly calling out in the comments. For our background, we aren't from the USA but Switzerland and Belgium respectively. And for me personally (Ewan), this horrific time period in Brazil, Argentina & other South American has only ever been covered outside of the classroom in film form. Which is disappointing to say the least for what it says about European history education. But it's something I will educate myself on further, before this film hopefully gets an Oscar nomination and more International attention so the discourse opens up more about the USA's involvement in all of this. - Ewan
You don’t need to apologize, people are kinda hypocrite, I’m pretty sure most brazilians wouldn’t know historical facts of Belgium and Switzerland (we don’t really study your countries in Brazil either, for example a lot of people sometimes mix up facts from Switzerland with Sweden because the spelling in portuguese is very similar (Suíça and Suécia))
We just get passionate about it because it is still an open wound for us, it’s fairly recent, our parents and grandparents lived through the military dictatorship and its horrors but somehow our political scenario with Bolsonaro a few years ago had several people asking for a military intervention again, so this type of movie is a reminder for us to not let this happen. NEVER AGAIN. To remember is to resist.
@@mayumeida Well spoken
@@mayumeida perfeita
This relates to US politics as well. Condor operation was a campaign to support dictatorships all over South America and caused the death of deputy Rubens Paiva, among many many others.
don't forget Operation Brother Sam
And Condor Operation only was discovered because Reinaldo, the soccer player, smuggled all the plans to a journalist friend. A vida é louca...
Fernanda Torres really deserves that best actress nomination!
I watched this film last sunday. IMO the greatest thing this did was not going into showing explicity what our dictatorship did, it focused more on the family and on what Eunice was going through. They could showed some torture scene to hit us like a brick, but they went for something melancholic that grows as the movie goes. Really good movie.
You see the movie as a family drama (it's also a family drama) because you have no notion of general history (and that's ok… no problem). It is a film about one of the most terrible moments in the recent history of Brazil, the military dictatorship, by the way this regime sponsored by the US. About the Oscar, well, I think this award is very cheesy. But it brings visibility to the productions so let's go.
It's a familiar drama. The dictatorship is the context. They're right. That's the force of the movie.
@@carlosmauricioardissone4736 Yes, this is the strength of the movie. Show the horrors of the dictatorship through a family drama. But you agree that this drama is very specific to this context (of a political regime of dictatorship), right? So, I believe that this point is not peaceful for discussion. 😘
@@carlosmauricioardissone4736 But I can also answer like this: who was born first, the egg or the chicken?
@sarahcintra1 What I meant to say is that it was a smart option to leave the dictatorship as a backdrop, otherwise it would have become an air of historical didacticism that would take the dramatic focus away from the story of Eunice and her family. I think that anyone who sees the film and wants to know more about the dictatorship can look for documentaries and other sources. But I believe we are on the same point, we do not disagree.
@@carlosmauricioardissone4736 No.
Brazilians already know the horrors of the dictatorship, we know what the torture was like, the modus operandi of the military, but very little is said about the thousands of victims, their families and their stories that were taken away by this time of terror, it makes perfect sense to see what Eunice saw, what she went through, not the context, it's her story, and her family's
the thing is this story is very famous in brazil, it’s part of history. And because, for me, it is a movie for brazilians, not for foreigners, it really makes sense to focus on Eunice and her family. So people from outside of Brazil can just search more about it and learn about our country 😉
For those who wanted more of the movie, we have the books!
One of the kids, Marcelo, is the author.
He wrote Feliz Ano Velho (Happy Old Year) about his accident and about how his childhood was with the missing of his father and later he wrote Ainda estou aqui (I am still here) about his mom and what she had gone through
So... Walter Salles, shows a family drama, but not just from the outside... He knows that story from the inside, because when he was 13 years old, he was a close friend to one of the Eunice daughters, so he frequented that house, he was part of that story and knew every corner of the house that mean so much for that family.
Maluco eu não sabia disso. Brigada pela informação
20 years in dictatorship left scars til nowadays 😢
Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here) is the daughter of Fernanda Montenegro (Central Station). Walter Salles directed both movies.
About the background and the character "wondering", well, Brazil also wondered for decades what had happened to Rubens Paiva, although everybody knew he was kidnapped and murdered under torture by the military. But the military never admitted they did it, and never had the decency to say where his body was. Those were really tough and dark times in Brazil.
The movie is based on a book written by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, a writter and the son of Rubens Paiva (it would be nice if, considering the international release of this movie, they translated the book to english and spanish so people from other countries could read it too). So it focuses more on the psychological and family life aspects of this story because of that, because it is based on the book of someone who lived the dissapearance of his father, but did not know then what was actually happening with his father.
I do understand, though, the criticism for the movie not showing more of the political and practical context behind Rubens' murder by the military dictatorship, as y'all don't know the history of Brazil's military dictatorship (much less, of the role of the US in sponsoring and in giving intelligence and operative aid to stablish many military dictatorships throughout latin america in the 20th century). However, I think it is not the purpose of the movie to make you learn more about the history of the brazilian military dictatorship, rather to show the interpersonal effects it had on people here. And, through that, make the audience connect with this family and this mother, which would make some people interested in learning more about the history.
Also, as another commentator cleverly put it, it gives a personal representation of the lack of knowing the military dictatorship subjected its people to. And it also is a way of honoring the memory of Rubens and of his wife Eunice, not focusing only on the ways they were victimized by the military dictatorship, but rather focusing on who they actually were as people.
If you wanna learn more about the history of the military dictatorship, I would reccomend starting with the documentary The Day That Lasted 21 Years (it's avaible on TH-cam, it's mostly in english with some portuguese parts that I think one could use the auto-translate of the captions to try to understand: th-cam.com/video/4ajnWz4d1P4/w-d-xo.htmlsi=4ztSb80alOdzdjqL ). Other brazilian movies that take place during the brazilian military dictatorship that I highly recomend watching are: Twenty Years Later (1986, og title: Cabra Marcado Para Morrer), Zuzu Angel (2006), Marighella (2019, and the 2012 documentary is very good also), The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2006, og title: O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias), Four Days in September (1997, og title: O Que é Isso, Companheiro?) and the documentary about the story told in the previous movie, which I reccomend even more than the movie itself, Hércules 56 (2006).
I don't know how you'd be able to stream those movies in foreign countries (like, where to find them) and which ones are avaible with english subtitles, but it's definitely worth it to search for those movies! There are more, of course, but those are the ones I remember right now.
Thank you for the recommendations! Exactly, that's the best thing a movie like this can do: nudging you to read up on history. Thank you for commenting!
I added the films you mentioned to a list on Letterboxd here: boxd.it/Aod4y
Let us know if any others come to mind & should be added. - Ewan
I always like to remember about "City of God" film. It shows another side of our dictatorship, the complete lack of care to those in need. The film starts with a lot of migrants tryng to flee from hungry that slay more than 2 milions in few years comming to Rio (and São Paulo). And as that abandon continues, violence and drug dealers just rises more and more.
It is interesting to note that "The Year My Parents went on Vacation" is directed by Cao Hamburguer and is based on the story of his family, too, his parents were University teachers and had to stay away during some time due to political prosecution, so they left the kids with their grand parents.
You have no idea how intensely this movie hit me and tbh everyone who was in that cinema with me. I was crying from the moment Eunice came home from the police station and i only stopped once i got back home, well after the movie had ended. To give you some personal context, my mom's family lived in a nearby neighbourhood from the one shown in the movie, also next to the beach, also in the 70s; they went to that same bookstore, that same beach point, they knew people from that school; she was the youngest of four (about the same age ranges as the kids from the movie) and was in the choir at her school and her siblings became engineers and my grandma was a stay at home mom and they had a little bit of land far from the city where my grandpa built a house; and my uncle acts exactly like Selton Mello's interpretation of Rubens Paiva in some scenes (and people keep saying my uncle acts a lot like my grandpa, who quit the military police as soon as he could before the dictotorship even started because he was against their ideology) and my mom tells me there were always people coming in and out of the house and- it's so close. Do you see how close this was. It could've been my family instead, just as easily, just like it *was* many other families as well at the time. They all look like what people from my family look like in pictures, they wear the same clothes and they talk the same way they did in the few home movies we have left. My mom still has some of those vinyls that appeared in the movie, that she inherited from her brothers at the time. I understand you wanting more context and focus on Paive himself but we learn about what happened to him at school; the strength of this movie was how much we feel like it could be us there, how real the family and their reactions feel. You can't tell the youngest what happened, you can't speak about it with anyone, you always have to look over your shoulder, you don't know who to trust. And you might never get closure.
They arrested Paiva and made some careless mistake and covered up that he died and the family was destabilised but they had to go on and that's exactly what my grandma would've done if it was my grandpa. It was such a realistic and devastating depiction of what happened, and that's what makes it so powerful. It doesn't exaggerate or take advantage of the pain, the gore, the violence to elicit emotions because the reality itself is enough, and we already KNOW all that happened. The horror of the situation wasn't just what happened to him, but that the families are left wandering. We don't know what happened to him, it would be insincere to speculate or turn it into a spectacle; but we do know that the families were left to pick up the pieces and keep fighting however they could, without risking endangering themselves even more. And then to keep living and make happy lived for themselves, without ever being able to bury their loves ones.
Anyways, thank you for reviewing it! Sorry for the long comment, i just feel like maybe there's a lot that's lost in translation here
Parabéns pelo depoimento.
Que os jovens no Brasil assistam este filme e esta história não se repita.
brasillians have a lot more context and that elevates the movie, we are hyper aware of the level of torture and brutality going on in the background, knowing that the characters can’t see or know, not being explicitly shown but haunting the movie like a ghost
Uma coisa a considerar é que Walter Salles é um cineasta interessado no Brasil. Assim foi "Central Station" ["Central do Brasil" no original], com uma viagem ao coração do país, ao sertão [backlands], para lidar com os contrastes de um país que buscava se modernizar. Com "Ainda estou aqui", ele refaz esse caminho ao examinar a modernização conservadora brasileira, mas num contexto urbano e de classe média a partir de um dos casos mais famosos de desaparecidos durante a ditadura. Boa a referência ao "Missing", belíssimo filme. Espero que leve um Oscar para exorcizar os fantasmas do cinema brasileiro e fazer justiça ao Oscar perdido por Fernanda Montenegro para a Gwyneth Paltrow naquele esquecível "Shakespeare apaixonado".
In this case, we don't pronounce "u" in "aqui", the pronunciation is like "aki".
I'm still gathering courage to watch this movie cause i'm 100% sure Fernanda Torres acting skills are gonna tear me to pieces and i'm not ready.
As for the film leaving something to be desired, from what I understand analysts would like to see images of perhaps what happened to the politician in prison. This would certainly show torture and death. But the film was not about that, but about the wife and her family. The director's objective is not to expose torture and barbarity, but to focus on the beautiful family, making the viewer feel part of it. I was born in 1972, and when I saw the film I had the feeling of being part of that family. And when that happens, the script brings the viewer closer to the story. It creates a feeling of empathy in the viewer.
These were such superficial comments. It’s about a family drama, but it is also much more than that. It’s about thousand ppl stories that had someone who was abducted by the militaries; It’s about a moment in history that we all study in schools here in South America and we grow afraid that it’ll happen someday again; it is about a regime that attacked everyone, even a successful civil engineer and ex politician that gave support to “enemies” of the government. You guys should be more aware about world’s History
Gringos né
eles apoiaram, né, então não é muita surpresa
Os caras nem cultura ou folclore próprio tem no país seboso deles, não da pra esperar nada de diferente deles.
So good to see reaction from English language people! Not always easy to break the language barrier.
Without the slightest doubt, one of the best films of all time. Fernanda Montegro only needed 2 seconds of screen time to make a full theater cry and Fernanda Torres delivers one of the most brilliant works an actress could do. An extremely necessary film to not leave the past forgotten and remind us that the fight for and maintenance of democracy must be constant.
its quite interesting how non-speakers pronounce portuguese almost like its latin kkkk
I think the fact that the end is kinda open, is exactly to show how the family felt in real life, you never relly found out what happened with him
The best movie of 2024 for sure! Fernanda Torres is outstanding!
No problem being a family drama. It IS a family drama and that's how people may connect with the story even if they don't know nothing about brasil, ditactorships, etc.
If anyone here want to see a more explicit film about brazillian dictatorship I really recommend a movie called Blood Baptism. It is HEAVY. But necessary.
The major aspect of the movie is memory, aside from the excelent family drama and historical context. Kinda meta in a way, surrounding the importance of proper registration and remembrance of history, so the horrors don't repeat themselves. No wonder it revolves around super 8 shots, music, photos, the pain of getting an official document confirming her husband's fate. In a sense Fernanda also represents brazilian society's way of viewing the US imposed fascist dictatorship. After redemocratization, in the 90's, her memory starts to fade. In 2014, she has alzheimer's. Around 2014/16 we had another coup on a democratically elected president (who fought against the dictatorship, was tortured in the 70s etc), in 2018 Brazil elected an openly fascist pro military dictatorship president. But the movie does give hope, the documentation on TV about the dictatorship revives her memory for a bit.
The title I'm Still Here is also a metaphor for the brazilian audience. We are still here with the danger of fascism and another military coup on the corner.
More than a cinematographic work, the film is a tribute and a denunciation. It exposes, in a raw and direct way, the brutality of repression, torture and persecution during the military dictatorship, reminding the public of the importance of keeping the memory of these dark times alive. Especially in current times, where speeches in support of dictatorship and historical revisionism are gaining strength, films like I'm Still Here have an essential role in preserving and honoring history and the victims of this state violence. Having done my TCC on the work of photographer Evandro Teixeira, who documented repression and became an icon of resistance against the dictatorship, I recognize in the film the same urgency in preserving memories and echoing silenced voices. I'm Still Here is, without a doubt, one of the most striking films of the year, a corrosive testimony to our history, and a constant reminder that silent lives must be remembered so that we never forget what was done.
if she is to be nominated for best actress i hope fernanda don't be stolen like her mother was.
This film focuses on the tragedy of the Paiva family to remember the tragedy in which the entire country was thrown into military dictatorship. In the end it shows the protagonist's loss of memory (which was real) which is also a metaphor for Brazil's loss of memory in relation to its recent history. The plague of dictatorship almost returned two years ago. I'm still here is an example of cinema as a historical record for new generations.
Fernanda Torres is an icon! She deserves all the awards
If u like "Im Still Here" and want to know more about Brazil's dictatorship through cinema, i really recommend you to watch "Marighella". An excellent movie, directed by Wagner Moura, just as raw as "Im still here", but based on a much more violent set of events related to Marighella. Marighella was also a former polititian like Rubens Paiva, and he is known as a real legend in Brazil to have taken a path of direct resistance to the regime.
I was born in Brazil during those horrible times, so I'm older than the democratic Statehood of my country, which in itself is so crazy. Without a doubt, I wish my fellow Americans to make means to find a theater wherein this movie is available; it is a hard and cruel portrait of our childhood and gives a real illustration of living in a country that embraces the "going after the enemy from within" rhetoric.
Some mounths ago, we had many brazilians asking for military intervention or returning of dictatorship. Its awful to think we could be living these days again nowadays! This film is not only a drama, but also an horror picture for us!
The movie is based in a book of Marcelo Rubens Paiva. Basically, his entire work is about the loss of his father and this one is centered on his mother.
The film has a tone of hints to deeper comversations, references in music and places, as a brazilian memoir, made for brazilians to remember, maybe thats why foreigners can't see deeper meanings... for example, at the end she's arranging the newspapers cut outs,
it shows briefly a headline of a case, a university rector who was ilegally abducted by the police force in 2016 and released later without any explanations, resulting in his suicide a few months later.
Also, we do have a bunch of movies that displays the dictatorship, bloody scenes, political conspiracies... none of them reach the popularity of this one. People are move by it because its so easy to relate and feel their grief.
Honestly, even the happy part was gut wrenching to me (and probably to a lot of brazilians) because all I could do was wonder when time would be up. I feel focusing on the complexities of the dictatorship would complicate things too much. As it wasn’t made specifically for an international audience as means of education, it’s understandable. Everyone here knows the regime and what they did. Even if someone didn’t know Rubens Paiva by name, they knew from the minute he was taken what would happen. He wasn’t coming back. Even when he says to his friend “this wont last youll be back and will reopen your book store”, we knew he was wrong. It was 1970, six years in and 15 to go. And having Selton to portray such a dear husband, father, friend, it only made us dread more the inevitability of his death.
To think the happiest moment of the movie was a wife getting her husband’s death certificate 25 years after he died. A time longer than their marriage. All that time, walking knowing he died horribly but not being able to have this acknowledged.
And knowing his murderers were free, and their families whole. No consequences for them, just for this family left broken because their father wanted to defend everyone’s rights.
I didn't watch the movie... But you guys wanted a flat, obvious narrative? Just like in American predictable movies? 😒
Nope. Not what we were saying at all.
Fernanda's performance is amazing, all the film is amazing!
I completely understand you guys wanting more of a background and for the movie to explore the dictatorship more, but its not about untouched potential, its a sensible choice. PLEASE, just give it a search. Movies are great for learning stuff, but how much time would it cost to research a bit of Brazil’s dictatorship? I guarantee you it would intensify the emotions you feel through the movie tenfold.
Fernanda Torres deserves the oscar that her mom didn’t got because Paltrow got it for Shakespeare in Love, which ew.
This film is simply fantastic
Fernanda Torres!
The wondering at the end is because that is how it happened, she got Alzheimer and forgot.
QUE PENA ! A INDÚSTRIA DE FILMES AMERICANA , NÃO NOS FAVORECE 🥲FILME ATUALÍSSIMO ! QUASE QUE O BRASIL SOFRE OUTRO GOLPE MILITAR 😭
Try to pronouce like that: aINda sTOw akEE (uppercase means tonic syllable) 👍
No one that did this was arrest. Was at the end of movie.
The point of this movie is precisely the understatement of terrible things, that's what moves the audiences around the world so deeply and intensely 😉
I'm Brazilian too btw and was a college student of one of Eunice's daughters
I'm Still Here
O que falta nesses filmes, e no final esta escrito bem grande, A CULPA FOI DOS EUA, acho que tocaria bem mais.
I wonder about something deeper, which is the relevance of the Oscars in today's world. We know that the issue is more commercial than artistic. Nor is it about pleasing an American audience. So why do we pay so much attention to this kind of thing? Not even America cares about this anymore. It's pathetic, but anyway, things are the way they are. I'm happy to know that both Fernanda Torres and Walter Salles keep their feet firmly on the ground, even though they're marathoning around the world, answering the same questions from journalists, doing what everyone else does. In addition, there is a more controversial element behind the military coups in Latin America, which is basically the backdrop to this story, which is the participation of the American government, instigating and sponsoring these conflicts. Nothing has changed. Trump is there to prove it. Good luck Americans.
There are several inconsistencies in this video, but one point that may address some of the criticisms is that the movie is a biopic, staying true to the biographical book it’s based on. The film intentionally does not go beyond being a family drama-it was a deliberate creative choice. However, the deeper significance lies in the fact that the torturers and other military officials from Brazil's dictatorship era were never held accountable for their crimes. They even recently attempted another coup against our democracy. This lingering impunity and enduring presence of these figures are encapsulated in the title, "I'm Still Here", waiting to be judged and punished.
Greetings from Brazil!🇧🇷
The dictatorships in South America are big part of the hatred/love relation we have with the US. Learn about the woes your country made possible in the past.
What you criticize is the great success of the film, subtext... It is not a film simply about the dictatorship, like so many, it is a film about absence and memory. It runs so much deeper. Why are americans so shallow?
Family drama? Go learn some history that’s not from your own country before talking about a production that explicitly takes place during one of its darkest periods
It's a beautiful movie
Ditaturas apoiadas e patrocinadas pelo Governo Americano
Are you kidding? Although the film focuses on the family of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, author of the book of the same name, it is a story that EVERY SINGLE BRAZILIAN experienced, it is about the military dictatorship. Go study history without studying the US, because wanting to depreciate a film like this is absurd.
It's crazy how this was pushed when nobody in Brazil watched or cared for it, just based on having Fernanda Montenegro(Central Station and that's its) and her daughter Fernanda Torres( nepo baby that had a free ride on TV because of her mother all her life) working together with Walter Salles(suspiciously involved in every relevant Brazilian movie in the last 30 years and his brothers are huge bankers by coincidence), all three from Rio, deeply related to Globo and really rich people that some might call the Brazilian royalty or mafia.
Ironically, the movie depicts a military dictatorship in Brazil and is portrayed by people who benefited greatly from said dictatorship and were financially backed by the Globo group that also supported the military dictatorship
Great story but all in all this was probably just a gift from Fernanda Montenegro to her not so talented daughter flexing her influence to birth this project and award submissions
So much bullshit. The movie is going quite well in the box offices and if you think Fernanda Torres is not talented, you are insane.
I could recommend 3 other AMAZING BRAZILIAN FILMS on the subject: 1) Zuzu Angel (She was a famous fashion designer and the dictatorship took her son. She uses fashion and her contacts with important people around the world to give voice to her pain), 2) Marighela (he was a military man who was against the dictatorship and he uses his military knowledge to train civilian fighters against the army) 3) Batismo de Sangue / Baptisms of Blood (Catholic priests are tortured because they start saving and hiding people from the dictatorship... it's a very explicit film about torture and I never finished this film because of that)
In this case, we don't pronounce "u" in "aqui", the pronunciation is like "aki".