How Brazil propelled drama I’m Still Here to be this year’s Oscars dark horse

Starring Fernanda Torres, I still have three major awards here, centering on a family torn apart by Brazil’s military dictatorship.

When the Oscar nomination was announced, Walter Sales’ incredible strength was still here. Fernanda Torres’ nod has sparked the celebration in Brazil – the best actress, the best international films and the most unexpected and most unexpected paintings. “I’m so proud! A kiss to Fernanda Torres and Walter Sales,” the president of the country, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva; Posted X. Emotionally powerful and eloquent, the film tells the real life story of a family living under the two-year military dictatorship in Brazil, which ended in 1985. Never seen it again with the military police, he left his wife, Eunice (Torres) to create the future for himself and her five children. For the next few years, when Eunice returns to school and becomes a prominent human rights lawyer, she never stops trying to find the truth about her husband’s fate and hold the state accountable. And on the day the nominations were announced on January 23rd, the film and reality crossed once more. Paiva’s death certificate, which he declared missing, was Fixed To reflect the reality that his death was “violence caused by the Brazilian state.”

I’m still here with Oscar’s dark horses and more. Looks like the forefront of international categories now, Torres has a realistic opportunity to disrupt at least the best actress, Demi Moore. Behind these nominations are the alchemical combination of personal, political and art. Few films have portrayed the devastating effects of politics on individuals in such intimate, visceral or timely ways.

“I have always been tempted by a film story where the character’s journey somehow blends with the journey of a country,” Sales tells the BBC. And although the film was explicitly about Brazil’s dictatorship, it was a major commercial hit in the country. It will become the best-selling homemade movie there since the pandemic – It also touches on viewers from around the world. For low-budget films, global box office numbers are noteworthy. It’s over $25 million, and includes over $3 million in just a month in the US, and still plays strong in cinemas.

The film’s awards journey is driven by its influence in Brazil. There, Torres is a major star in support of huge social media. Brazilian journalist and film critic Isabela Boskov told the BBC: She attributes her success to Torres’ popularity, how the film perceives Brazil in the 1970s, and a combination of factors, including the national mood. The recent history of the country has been turbulent. Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government held power from 2019 to 2023. When I lost the 2022 election, His supporters stormed Congress, the Presidential Palace and the Supreme Court.and last year, Bolsonaro did that. Officially accused It is said that they planned a coup. “Walter Sales has this gift to encapsulate exactly what the country needs. “At this point, Brazil is a very divided country in terms of thought and ideology. And I am I think half of the country wants to face what happened in the past [during the dictatorship]so that doesn’t happen again.

Of course, all the attention and maneuvering would not have been important. Of course, even if voters and audiences weren’t responding that strongly to the film itself. It deals with tragedy, but it is also full of warmth, starting with a scene between the Paiva family and their friends, then dinner and laughing and dancing on the beach, leading a full life. Sales personally knew his family as a young teenager in Rio de Janeiro. “I was invited to that house and the intimacy of that family. I was hooked on it,” he says. Recreating that vibe is a way to welcome viewers into the film. However, families are always aware of the dangers around them. Returning home from the film, one of her teenage daughters and one of her friends are pulled and questioned by the police.

The Salles film includes Central Station (1998). It was also nominated for the International Film Oscar. Still here. It still took me seven years to create here, he says, because “I had so many layers of memories that I wanted to be faithful.” He was inspired to make the film after reading a 2015 memoir by Marcelo Paiva, son of Rubens and Eunice. So we lost our memories when the country was beginning to lose its collective memories,” Sales said. The story provided what he called “double reflection” in the past.

Reminiscing viewers of his country’s past was very important to Sales, and another reason to make the film took a lot of time. “It would have been impossible to imagine filming this film during the Bolsonaro era,” he says. “We probably wouldn’t have been allowed to shoot in public spaces. Basically, we could have shot the interior, but it wouldn’t have been the appearance of the film. This certainly adds three or four years to development. did.”

Sales said of the real women, “Eunice is a character who rejected melodrama.” This is quality that infuses the film and Torres’ sophisticated, powerful suppressed performance. Seeing her husband moves his car calmly away from their front door, Eunice gives a slight and encouraging smile, as if to have a friendly encounter. The face is an image of sadness of sadness beneath the calm facade. Torres can always see sadness and pain under restraint. After Rubens’ loss, Sales says he decided that he would not “turn into an authoritarian regime and never allow himself to be portrayed as a victim.” He points out, “Whenever she wants to cry on camera, she’s going to do the exact opposite.” The film scene recreates it when the journalists ask the family not to smile for the photo, and Eunice insists they do so.

Until 1996, the first one that mistakenly listed the cause of her death as “missing” took her to obtain a death certificate. In the film, she proudly presents the certificate to reporters, saying, “Forced Loss Disappears you will kill one person, but blame everyone else for eternal psychological torture, so the regime’s toughest It was one of the actions.” Capturing enduring sadness and uncertainty is one of the most original and impactful things in film.

Even Sales had already realised when he filmed the film that the vulnerability of democracy was not something that has nothing to do with Brazil anymore, he says, but he says. In many countries around the world. “One of the things that the first authoritarians do on a daily basis is “trying to erase memories and slightly rewrite history.” Preserving personal and political memories and history is at the heart of my still being here. Sales said: “One of the reasons why this film resonated so strongly in Brazil was that the audience accepted the humanity of their family, but they were looking at their own reflections on screen and accessing some of them. The long-forgotten history of Brazil.”

I’m still here, but I’m currently in the US cinemas and released in the UK on February 21st.