A Horrifying True Story, Told Through Mundane Details

The beginning of I’m Still Here is a careful trap. In the first 20 minutes of his new film, the director Walter Salles introduces the Paiva family, a vibrant Brazilian clan based in Rio de Janeiro. It’s 1970, and we watch the seven family members—Eunice (played by Fernanda Torres), Rubens (Selton Mello), and their five kids—eat, chatter, hit the beach, and go dancing. Their bond feels palpably warm and realistic, a comforting lull that Salles is tempting the audience into. Despite knowing that the story is based on wrenching, real-life events, I started to hope against hope that maybe nothing too plotty would happen—that instead, I would just get to spend a couple of hours with this lovely, buzzing unit.

But the vaguest sense of political instability hums in the background of the Paivas’ sandy idyll. In 1964, a military coup overthrew Brazil’s populist democracy, in which Rubens had served as a left-wing congressman. Nearly seven years on, the country is still under martial law. One day, as Eunice and Rubens are playing backgammon and sorting through old photos, the police knock on the door; they curtly take Rubens away for questioning. “I’ll be back for the soufflé,” he tells his wife calmly. In retrospect, it’s the most devastating line in the movie: He won’t see her or their children ever again.

What happened to Rubens Paiva is well known in Brazil. Rubens was one of many citizens disappeared by the country’s military dictatorship over the 21-year regime—suspected Communists the military whisked away, never to return. The government admitted to Rubens’s death at its hands only decades after the fact, and his body still hasn’t been found. His case became particularly notorious because of Eunice’s years-long efforts to draw attention to it: She became a well-known human-rights lawyer, campaigning for victims of political repression. But what happened to Rubens is still a matter of controversy in a country where far-right politicians, until recently, held power.

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Salles could have taken a blunt, agitprop approach to rendering these events, primarily devoting the film’s screen time to Eunice’s fight for recognition. But the director avoids framing I’m Still Here as an “inspirational true story” focused on Eunice’s legal career; plenty of good articles and books have been written about it. Instead, he confines that information to a few title cards that roll before the end credits. Salles’s take on the Paivas’ saga is subtler and, in my opinion, more successful than this manner of biopic. He creates a quieter sort of historical drama that lives in the aftermath of Rubens’s disappearance, a situation that sometimes feels eerily ordinary. By highlighting Eunice’s role as a parent, Salles pushes viewers toward considering the mundanity of living under a dictatorship—and the gnawing nightmare of lacking control in the face of obvious evil. The years roll on for Eunice and the children, but their everyday bickering or meal prep becomes defined by an absence.

That unsettling feeling is communicated by Torres’s devastating, genuine performance. She won a surprising but well-deserved Golden Globe earlier this month—a shocker not only because I’m Still Here is relatively small-scale, but also because Torres’s work is light on the histrionics that often draw in awards votes. Following their initial visit, armed men then take Eunice and her second-eldest daughter to a mysterious location, where they’re interrogated about both Rubens and their own Communist ties. Eunice remains imprisoned for almost two weeks before she’s released without much explanation; she returns home and immediately tries her best to project an air of normalcy. All the while, Eunice is looking for answers as to her husband’s whereabouts. The kids are old enough to be aware of their family’s ordeal, but their shared anxiety doesn’t affect the restrained atmosphere. Much of what occurs from then on feels sweetly, almost dully relatable.

I’m Still Here’s thoughtful perspective has resonated in Brazil, where it has become the highest-grossing domestic film since the coronavirus pandemic. Acclaim for Salles’s diligent, low-key filmmaking dates back to his international breakthrough, 1998’s Central Station; its star (and Torres’s mother) Fernanda Montenegro received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Salles has continued to favor a muted tack throughout his career—even when making a Hollywood horror movie, such as the largely forgotten (and somewhat underrated) Dark Water.

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Perhaps adding to the local hype for I’m Still Here is that it marks the end of Salles’s directorial hiatus. His last effort, an underwhelming adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, premiered back in 2012. I’m Still Here is a very worthy comeback, and certainly his strongest work since 2004’s The Motorcycle Diaries, a portrayal of Che Guevara’s early years touring Latin America. That film, like this one, wore its political message on its sleeve without overdoing it. Salles hasn’t always nailed this delicate balance (again, his rather limp On the Road), but in this case, it pays off beautifully.

I’m Still Here’s most impressive magic trick, though, is a piece of meta-casting near its conclusion. The timeline leaps forward to the year 2014, introducing the 95-year-old Montenegro as the older version of Eunice. What happens during these closing moments is as tempered and straightforward as everything that precedes them: The action boils down to a few feelings vaguely flickering across Eunice’s face—but that’s all Salles needs to deliver a final emotional hammer blow.