I'm Still Here: Fighting for Memory in Brazil's Dark Past
© Fernanda Torres in I'm Still Here (2024), film still. Courtesy of VideoFilmes en RT Features.
Kristal Moreira Gouveia en Koen Vanderschelden discuss the political context of I’m Still Here. The movie, directed by Walter Salles, is gaining international praise and attention now that it has won the Oscar for best international film. Although the film is quite implicit and intimate, focusing on one particular family, one of many stories set during the brutal era of military dictatorships in Brazil and Latin America, with repercussions that can still be felt today.
Disclaimer: this article contains (necessary) spoilers
I’m Still Here, the movie directed by Walter Salles, based on the book of Marcelo Rubens Paiva about the disappearance of his father, is gaining international praise and attention now that it has won the Oscar for Best International Film. The film is set in Brazil at the beginning of the 1970s, at the height of a military dictatorship. Although the film is quite implicit and intimate, focusing on one particular family, it’s only one of the many possible stories in what was a very harsh period for Brazil and Latin America, with repercussions that can still be felt today.
When the military dictatorship (1964-1985) began on April 1, 1964, there was no newsflash to alarm society that normality would be completely changed. The media did not report that something radical and sinister was about to happen in Brazil, but were immediately absorbed by the machinery of the coup. Most of the human rights violations did not occur in ostentatious armed conflicts in the middle of the streets. Instead, they took place in hidden, locked rooms, without witnesses or documentation to prove what was happening. The regime carried out orders to exterminate any "enemy of the State". According to the National Security doctrine used in other dictatorships in Latin America such as Uruguay, Chile, Argentina and El Salvador, this meant anyone who opposed the regime, even if only ideologically. It didn’t matter what their occupation was—a teenage student or a communist party parliamentarian. Both were, in equal measure, enemies of the regime.
“People were taken from their homes in broad daylight to be interrogated—teachers, students, artists, politicians—and never returned. From an external perspective, much remained business as usual.”
The Brazilian dictatorial regime instilled heinous crimes such as torture, rape, and murder on thousands of civilians of all ages and occupations. The regime’s main technique was forced disappearances. People were taken from their homes in broad daylight to be interrogated—teachers, students, artists, politicians—and never returned. From an external perspective, much remained business as usual. On the radio, Roberto Carlos sang, on television, Pelé would win another World Cup title in 1970.
In the newspapers, Brazil was experiencing an “economic miracle”, with an increase in the Gross Domestic Product and pharaonic projects being built. The silence and the sense of normality worsened a climate of suffocation and claustrophobia in families who waited, day after day, for answers that would never come. All access routes to information were part of mechanisms to silence violence, voluntarily or not. It was one of the regime's main strategies, which to this day has concrete consequences in Brazilian reality.
The deaths of political prisoners were neither reported nor made official. According to local authorities, they were said to be “missing,” have “escaped,” or “would be back soon.” The closest one could get to truth in the obscurity of silence were false suicide certificates, as in the case of Vladimir Herzog, a journalist and director of TV Cultura, who voluntarily presented himself to give a statement at army headquarters and was never seen again.
The grotesque reality affected not only those directly involved in the resistance or even those trying to help persecuted people, but also family members and friends who struggled between fear and indignation, searching for information, having to bear the weight of living in a claustrophobic reality. The world continued to turn under the facade of normality, while people had their screams of torture muffled in secret rooms.
“The tension between false normality, silencing, and repressing a cry that could never come—for a death that for a long time could not even be proven—reflects the reality of thousands of people.”
This is the context of the film I'm Still Here (2024), a family drama based on a true story. Rubens Paiva, a congressman who had his mandate revoked when the coup took place, was one of many political disappearances. The tension between false normality, silencing, and repressing a cry that could never come—for a death that for a long time could not even be proven—reflects the reality of thousands of people. They were unable to obtain the long-awaited death certificate that Eunice Paiva, beautifully portrayed by Fernanda Torres, managed to get after a lifetime of struggle.
When the dictatorship began to lose its economic strength in the late 1970s, with the oil crisis hitting and political agreements for a transition towards a more democratic system slowly being designed, the strategy used by those in power was the Amnesty Law, as happened in other Latin American countries (Chile, El Salvador, Uruguay, for example). Ironically, the fight for amnesty was led by students, journalists, and opposition politicians, as it was intended to set free political prisoners and other persecuted and exiled people. However, when adopted in June 1979, it became clear that it only partially served their interests, as it also favored the military and those responsible for the innumerous tortures and human rights violations from prosecution.
The Amnesty Law would pardon all those who committed "political crimes and crimes related to political crimes" between 1961 and 1979. With this negotiated transition, the terrors of the dictatorship were never openly addressed and the dispute over narrative and memory did not have a clear outcome for those who saw the silencing perpetuate and reality distorted for years and decades on end, creating a context such that, even in 2025, many Brazilians will argue that there never was a dictatorship. After all, their parents and grandparents "never saw violence with their own eyes".
The way in which memory has been distorted as a form of political control remains part of today’s Brazil. In 2014, when he was a congressman, Jair Bolsonaro spat on the tribute paid to Rubens Paiva, when he was honored in the Chamber of Deputies. At that same time, contrary efforts were made. The then-president Dilma Rousseff, who herself was tortured during the military dictatorship, received the final report of the National Truth Commission (CNV), which had investigated the human rights violations committed during the military dictatorship. Although the report underestimates the total violations and the Amnesty Law protected military officials from further prosecution, those were the first steps to recognize its horrible past, but its consequences were not enough to rescue the lost memory.
Two years later, when Bolsonaro voted in favor of the coup against former president Dilma Rousseff, he honored Carlos Brilhante Ustra, former head of the Internal Defense Operations Center (DOI-Codi). It was the start of serious political backlash, where the hard work of the CNV was undone. From 2019 to 2022, then-president Jair Bolsonaro paid tribute to the military dictatorship and its agents on several occasions. Calling it “a revolution” and posting official notes commemorating March 31, 1964, the then-president perpetuated a discourse of denial of the memory of violence that still has many followers in Brazil.
When I’m Still Here was released, many of Bolsonaro’s political allies tried to boycott the film. As the movie adds to the implicit nature of the atrocities, making it appealing to a less progressive in audience. The fact that just Fernanda Torres and Selton Mello, both of whom are best known for their comedies, play the lead roles can be seen as an ironic but necessary way to bring the atrocities to the attention of a mainstream audience as well.
“The process has been underway for more than ten years, and is a demand of victims' relatives and organizations fighting for the preservation of memory and justice.”
With the film finally addressing what was swept under the rug for so long, the building that housed the DOI-Codi, where Rubens Paiva and countless other political prisoners were tortured and killed, will this year be officially recognized as a historical heritage site. The process has been underway for more than ten years, and is a demand of victims' relatives and organizations fighting for the preservation of memory and justice. In addition to Paiva, the National Truth Commission (CNV) has identified 52 others who died or disappeared as a result of direct action by DOI-Codi agents. With the recognition, the expectation is that the site will become a centre of memory and resistance against the regimes of exception.
Many Brazilians saw an account of the dictatorship with their own eyes for the first time due to the release of the film. In a heated political context, in which fascist speeches are once again resurfacing, human rights are considered a dirty word by a large part of the population and coup attempts are orchestrated by members of the government itself against the current president, Lula, memory is not a matter of the past. Acknowledging the memory of the dictatorship and recent Brazilian history is a necessity in the fight for democracy.
What is being discussed in the coronation of Walter Salles’ work as the first Brazilian film to win this international award is much more than a film: we are witnessing, in real time, the expansion of a country's political controversy to an audience that has been alienated for decades from knowing the true history of their own country. Brazil's violent past is not the context of the film, but rather its main theme. I’m Still Here is a film about politics, dictatorship and memory. A memory that to this day is the subject of fierce dispute and that finds, gaining national and international attention, an opportunity to be recovered.
Kristal Moreira Gouveia is a Human Rights Researcher, PhD Candidate and has a master degree in Legal History. She is a law professor at UniFAP in Ceará, Brazil.
Koen Vanderschelden is a psychologist, policy advisor and Rephrase co-founder. With Rephrase, he aims to diversify the Flemish media landscape by pushing new voices and narratives to the center stage.