Military dictatorships in South America’s Southern Cone provided the backdrop for some of the most memorable moments in the so-called political cinema. I’m Still Here, the new Brazilian feature film directed by Walter Salles Jr., gains additional significance when viewed through this lens. Released amid the opening procedures of a trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro and his allies for planning and attempting a coup between 2021 and 2023, the film has struck a deep chord with Brazilian audiences, drawing about six million viewers to theaters in five months and receiving many awards and critical appraisals.
I’m Still Here is more than just a film about history—it is a statement about the present and a warning for the future. As in other countries of South America’s South Cone, the last 40 years of Brazilian history can only be understood by examining how political actors position themselves in relation to the military era. For a significant portion of Brazilian adults, life under military rule remains a vivid and painful memory. Nevertheless, the economic decline of the subcontinent and the incapacity of post-democratization governments to reverse it have fueled a wave of right-wing populism. Figures like Bolsonaro, Javier Milei, and José Antonio Kast have garnered substantial electoral support, often romanticizing an imagined “golden age” of military rule. This trend, however, has met fierce resistance from broad sectors of society that overwhelmingly reject authoritarianism. Known for his meticulous storytelling, Salles has crafted a film that speaks to Brazil’s past while resonating with its current vicissitudes.
The 68-year-old director has previously worked in historical drama (The Motorcycle Diaries, 2004, based on the youthful travels of Ernesto Che Guevara), adaptations of acclaimed novels like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (2012), and socially charged original screenplays like Central Station (1998). Though I’m Still Here is arguably his most personal film, it blends elements and themes from his entire career. The story revolves around the kidnapping and murder of Brazilian former congressman Rubens Paiva (1929-1971), played by Selton Mello. The protagonist, however, is his wife, Eunice Paiva (1929-2018), portrayed by Fernanda Torres. Eunice’s world is shattered by her husband’s disappearance, and in seeking answers, she becomes an icon of resistance against the regime.
His greatest political miscalculation was underestimating the regime’s paranoia, and his only real defiance was maintaining contact with exiles and their families.
The film is based on the memoirs of the Paivas’ son, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, published in 2015, from which it borrows its title, narrative structure, and key factual details. Unlike many dictatorship victims, Rubens Paiva did not belong to underground organizations or live under a false identity. A member of a wealthy family from the powerful state of São Paulo, he had his political rights revoked by the regime and spent a brief period in exile before returning to Brazil, where he lived a seemingly apolitical life as a partner in an engineering firm in Rio de Janeiro. His greatest political miscalculation was underestimating the regime’s paranoia, and his only real defiance was maintaining contact with exiles and their families. For this, he paid with his life.
A friend of the Paiva family (he had been a schoolmate of Ana Lucia, one of Paiva’s daughters), Salles infuses the movie with a warm, intimate atmosphere. The Paivas lived in a bright, spacious home on Delfim Moreira Avenue in Rio’s upscale Leblon neighborhood. The address is less than two kilometers (about one mile) from the restaurant in the neighboring district where Vinicius de Moraes and Tom Jobim found inspiration in 1963 to compose “Garota de Ipanema.” The house serves as a focal point: it is from within its walls that Salles will follow the family’s saga.
In Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s book, he writes that Leblon is a neighborhood nestled between two large favelas and that the Paiva family house had already been robbed, probably by petty criminals, in what would become a typical incident of a violent Brazilian metropolis in the following years. However, the Rio-born Salles is not interested in creating a realistic portrait of his hometown. Instead, he aims to stay true to his own memories of the Paiva family, who experienced the happiest days of their lives in Rio. Some of the images captured in the opening sequences come from a home Super 8 camera, the kind that flooded upper-middle class households by the thousands during the Brazilian Miracle (1968–1973), a period of outstanding economic growth. In shaky and out-of-focus footage, the bon vivants Rubens and Eunice are seen embracing, smiling, and celebrating among their children and friends.
The film’s first half-hour plays out against a vibrant backdrop of sun, sea, and youth, evocative of the lively rhythms of Bossa Nova. It is through Eunice’s perspective that the viewer is introduced to the gray areas of this idyllic setting. In a striking scene, she swims alone in the sea off Leblon when her daydream is interrupted by the noise of a military helicopter flying low over the beach. The contrast between Eunice’s world—the sea, not only a primordial element associated with the origin of life and motherhood but also a seminal romantic feature of Brazilian identity—and the oppressive surveillance of the military machine is echoed throughout the entire film. Little by little, the looming shadow of the dictatorship closes in on the Paiva family: military vehicles patrol the waterfront, friends speak in hushed whispers about politics, and the eldest daughter—soon to be sent abroad in search of a freer environment—is stopped at a police checkpoint targeting so-called subversives.
The tragic turning point of the story takes place on yet another radiant morning on January 20, 1971, coincidentally, in real life, the municipal holiday and symbolic anniversary of the city. Without warning, plainclothes agents of the regime burst into the Paiva household and summon Rubens to accompany them for questioning. Aware of the repression’s methods, the ousted congressman remains calm and composed—partly to avoid distressing his wife and children and partly because he likely believes that his social standing and political notoriety will shield him from the worst. In the film, the military officers carry .38-caliber revolvers concealed under their shirts, whereas, in reality, they enter the house armed with machine guns. Salles conveys the violence of the situation through the agents’ actions: curtains are drawn, phones are monitored, and a team remains in the house while Rubens is taken to his interrogation in his wife’s car. The once lively, noisy, and sunlit Paiva home now becomes silent, suffocating, and dark.
After Rubens’ disappearance, Eunice becomes the film’s emotional anchor. The following day, she and her teenage daughter, Eliana, are also taken in for questioning by the agents. Driven from the southern zone to the northern zone of Rio, they are at some point hooded to prevent them from identifying the route. Their destination, according to historical records, is the feared Army Police Battalion Headquarters in Tijuca, which by then housed the DOI-Codi, the main political detention and torture center in Rio de Janeiro, under the command of the army. The teenage girl is released after a day, but only after being forced to examine photo albums of suspected subversives and pressured to betray opponents of the dictatorship. Eunice, however, is held illegally for 12 days. During her time behind bars, Rubens’ wife is confined in a squalid cell furnished with only a bed and mattress, leaving it only for the infamous interrogations. She loses 44 pounds.
According to historical records, Eunice and her husband were held for at least a few hours between January 21 and 22 in the same building in Tijuca. It was there that Rubens was reportedly murdered under torture by a team of military officers. His wife, in turn, was spared from physical abuse beyond humiliating treatment and hooding. In a sense, this was a fortunate outcome, as dozens of innocent relatives of political prisoners were subjected to the same harsh treatment as their loved ones in places like DOI-Codi. In the film, the notorious violence that defined the Brazilian dictatorship’s detention centers is only hinted at. For that very reason, it is even more terrifying.
Upon leaving prison, Eunice gradually realizes that she faces two immense and interconnected missions: uncovering her husband’s whereabouts and, until that happens, taking charge of her family’s future.
Upon leaving prison, Eunice gradually realizes that she faces two immense and interconnected missions: uncovering her husband’s whereabouts and, until that happens, taking charge of her family’s future. The anguish of this challenge emerges in all its dramatic intensity in the scene where, back in the Leblon house, alone and naked under the shower, she takes her first bath. The water, in which she had always felt free and at ease, serves as a purifying element. There is also a heartrending ambiguity: for a long time, it was believed that Rubens Paiva’s body had been thrown into the sea by the military. The bath sequence, marked by silence, is one of Fernanda Torres’s most masterful moments in the role. It took many months for Eunice to accept that her husband was dead. On the defensive, the dictatorship refused to acknowledge responsibility for his disappearance and circulated absurd versions of events—claiming that Rubens was never at DOI-Codi or that he escaped when the police vehicle transporting him was intercepted by guerrillas.
With the firm composure of someone deeply wounded but not broken, the widow embarks on what will become an endless political and legal chess match with the regime. On the day of her release—without signing any documents—Eunice happens to catch a glimpse of her own car parked in the barracks courtyard. This detail later allows the family to obtain their first piece of evidence that Rubens had been held at DOI-Codi. With the help of friends and by exploiting loopholes in the dictatorship’s exceptional laws, she painstakingly gathers evidence and court rulings that dismantle the official lies. It took 25 years for her to finally obtain her husband’s death certificate in 1996, a full 11 years after Brazil’s return to democracy.
The film closes with an elderly Eunice, now suffering from Alzheimer’s, watching television with her family in São Paulo. A news segment features the Brazilian Truth Commission, which investigates dictatorship-era crimes. When an image of Rubens appears on the screen, her eyes brighten with recognition. It is a poignant moment of memory and closure, subtly echoed by the final scene of their last morning together.
Luiz Antônio Araujo is a journalist, writer, editor, translator, professor, and academic researcher on Journalism and International Relations based in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He is author of three books and is currently working on a biography of Brazilian art critic and revolutionary intellectual Mario Pedrosa (1900-1981) to be released soon by Record publishing house.