At the movies: This story is not only exciting, it’s true

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Rio, 1971, under a military dictatorship. Paiva’s big house, near the beach, is a haven of life, common words, games, meetings. Until the day when men from the regime arrive to arrest the father of the family, Rubens, who disappears without a trace. His wife Eunice and his five children will then lead a fierce battle in search of the truth…

Personally true story

At first glance, I’m still here could be Walter Sales’ appeal to the audience, who lost track of him since 2012 and on the way, since the release of his last film until now, and who returns with the first film after the sun Heartbreak. But no. If it is not possible to read it in this way, we must give back to César what belongs to Marcelo Paiva, the author of the book that inspired the Brazilian filmmaker and which at the same time returns to his story. country and own.

“I knew part of the story well, because I was and am a friend of Marcelo’s third sister, whose name is Anna Lucia, who lives in Paris.– he tells us, in the capital and his French is almost perfect. “Through him, I became close to my family when I was 13 years old. I spent my teenage years in this house, where we went on weekends because it was so lively, with five young people between the ages of 10 and 17, parents and mutual friends meeting at the same time.

“It was a house where the windows were constantly open, there was no key on the door. There were political discussions from all sides and all generations were invited, which was not at all the case in my house. I learned to love Brazilian music, which I partially knew before, but this idea was more interesting, more inclusive and polyphonic of what Brazil was at that time, because we were under a military dictatorship.”

“This house has always been a reverse shot for me. But for everyone there was a before and after day when Dad was taken to a military prison for interrogation and never came back. It’s a personal part of the story. And the book taught me everything that happened next, because when that tragedy struck him, the family Rio left for Sao Paulo and we, his friends, lost direct contact.

“Of course I kept in touch with Marcelo over the years because he’s a writer and a screenwriter and we’ve seen each other a lot, given that we work in the same circles, but I didn’t realize how much Eunice became his mother. The family was the center and invented the forms of resistance characteristic of it, that’s why this book is the starting point of the film, and I also met each of the sisters to hear their opinion. Marcelo was 11 years old at the time of the accident.”

“I wanted a little inside RashomonIt has several points of view to construct the scenario. That’s why it took so long to mature: seven years in total, of which, admittedly, four are due in part to the silence created by the Bolsonaro government, which has deeply destabilized Brazilian culture. .

“Have several points of view to build a scenario”

Rashomon, like Akira Kurosawa’s classic, gave its name to a way of telling a story by combining multiple points of view. Walter Sales in a complementary and non-contrasting way to get the most accurate picture of this era and these events, based on the memories of each person.

Here’s How I’m Still Here is inspired by the book written by Marcelo Paiva, which connects the past and the present, but especially follows Eunice (Fernanda Torres, awarded the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman) while we easily We imagine that Walter Sales put a little bit of himself into the shots of the family Elder daughter with camera in hand to document this era. which it recreates.

“Marcelo’s book is very multifaceted in its construction. And I think the title, I’m Still Here, applies to every member of his family. But the fact that it shows how much Eunice was both a mother and a father.” During the second part of her life, Paives evoked a feminist narrative that was quite unusual in Brazilian literature and also allowed us to see the point of view of a woman who had to reinvent herself so that the family, as well as the whole, could continue. “

“And she does it in a way that is not easy for the children because, for example, she is a woman who has never shared with them what happened with their father. So, on the one hand, he doesn’t allow himself to do that. As a victim of the government’s treatment, he refuses melodrama, but on the other hand, as the father did, he does not tell everything to his children.It makes it very difficult to grieve from this. So there’s a reinvention, but he remains a very complex character. There is no heroism of this woman, which I find extraordinary and harsh in finding a way to survive.”

“As for Super 8, it has to do with the fact that when we did our research in the 70s, we came across a lot of family films in Super 8 that at the same time revealed the whole human geography of the moment – beyond which you could see the Brazilian political situation, and that’s when I started shooting in Super 8, so everything was intertwined.

“I think the film can be seen as a film about this family trying to live intensely as a form of resistance to the military dictatorship, and that’s what they stole when the father was arrested. We can even. Say it’s a utopia or a desire for another country that will be taken away from them when their father is gone, and it leads to the whole second part of the film, which is much more defined by the exclusion of elements, because you have no more music, the windows are closed and the lights are turned off in the house, and all voices die: the military dictatorship It also affects the language, because people can no longer speak directly.

A taboo past for Brazilian cinema?

And cinematic language too? With this story of sustainability, which turns out to be more and more overwhelming, and which also “On our past rather than our present”In his own words, Walter Salles echoes his first film, Distant Land, which focused on the exile of Brazilians of the time. But is this dark past still as taboo in Brazilian cinema as the Algerian War was for a long time in France?

“The cinemas of Argentina and Chile looked in this direction more sincerely than Brazil, for one reason: the crimes committed during the military dictatorship were tried and the torturers were imprisoned, and this is not the case in Brazil, on the contrary, there was an amnesty for us. What the military negotiated after 21 years in power, so the transition movement was not as clear as for our neighbors. “

“Brazilian cinema still dealt with these years of lead, but rarely through the microcosm of the family, showing both the military dictatorship and those who remained in Puenzo which followed the family’s point of view.”

“When it came out in Brazil, the fact that several generations went so quickly to see it, to live this collective experience, showed that there was a real desire to approach this story, to better understand what happened in our past. To better define what our present and future will be like. Kleber Mendonca Filiowhich will be released in 2025 and which I’m sure will provide an additional, extremely in-depth look at this era.”

The film in question is called Secret Agent and we wouldn’t be surprised if it made it to Cannes. But, in the meantime, I’m still here making stories, and its true story, as well as the way Walter Sales tells it, may bring tears to your eyes in what is already presented as the pinnacle of cinema. In 2025, it was crowned a great public success (more than three million viewers) in Brazil.

Comments collected by Maximilien Pierret in Paris on December 16, 2024