I’m Still Here review: Three-time Oscar nominated film packs a punch

They came for him not at night but in broad daylight.

Rubens Paiva, a former congressman, engineer, husband and father-of-five, was taken in for “questioning” by armed men claiming to be part of the Brazilian Air Force.

He went upstairs to his bedroom and changed his clothes as his wife, Eunice, looked on, clearly concerned but unable to express any panic in case it alarmed their youngest kids. Rubens drove off in his car, chaperoned by one of the men in the passenger seat while another car followed.

His family would never see him again.

I’m Still Here, the Brazilian film nominated for three Oscars at this year’s awards, packs a powerful punch not just because it’s based on a true story but because it could happen again. In fact, it almost nearly did.

Brazil suffered under a military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. While democracy was restored to the country, there has not been a proper accounting for all the crimes and cruelty committed by the autocratic regime. There hasn’t been true reconciliation or justice.

It also spurred its far-right former president, Jair Bolsonaro, to attempt a coup in 2022 when he lost the election. Federal police allege Bolsonaro conspired to seize power in a plot that included plans to abduct and assassinate his rivals.

The revelations were chilling in a country that, in recent memory for many, spent two decades under the yoke of anti-democratic hardliners. Rubens Paiva was murdered the day after he was forced out of his home, but the perpetrators were never prosecuted.

Directed by Walter Salles, I’m Still Here serves as both an emotional personal story of one family’s experience and a warning. It’s not over. Democracy and the rule of law are fragile.

Ruben’s “disappearance” is the instigating beat in I’m Still Here but the film belongs to Eunice (Fernanda Torres, nominated for a best actress Oscar), who steadfastly tried to keep her family together and functioning in the face of enormous hardship.

The film takes care to portray the Paivas’s lives before Ruben was taken. It’s sunny days at the beach playing volleyball, kids talking over each other around the dinner table, the gathering of friends and late-night games of foosball.

The political situation punctuates into this world too — oldest daughter Vera and her friends are strip-searched by the military on their way home from the cinema, Eunice and Rubens’ friends discuss the escalating threat.

The film makes the argument that it can seem as if life goes on under extraordinary political turmoil and that, most of the time, what’s happening out there doesn’t affect you. But it’s a potent reminder that it can – and will.

Those early scenes also have the effect of underscoring what Eunice and her kids have lost, giving the story extra emotional oomph.

As Eunice, Torres turns in an outstanding performance marked by restraint, all the rage and grief she can’t openly express. Eunice pushes for answers and acknowledgement of her husband’s fate but she has to, as she makes clear to another character, raise five kids.

Three of them are teenagers but the two still in their single digits has to be protected from the truth of everything. Torres anchors the film with grace, determination and anguish, and selling all those emotions without the ease of a big breakdown scene is an impressive accomplishment.

It’s a performance that stays with you, as does the story, in part because it is one of hundreds of tales from that era in Brazil. The ubiquity of it is what’s most unsettling.

Rating: 4/5

I’m Still Here is in cinemas