I'm Still Here

I'm Still Here

By

  • Genre: Drama, History
  • Release Date: 2024-09-19
  • Runtime: 138 minutes
  • : 7.9
  • Production Company: VideoFilmes
  • Production Country: Brazil, France
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7.9/10
7.9
From 319 Ratings

Description

In the early 1970s, the military dictatorship in Brazil reaches its height. The Paiva family - Rubens, Eunice, and their five children - live in a beachside house in Rio, open to all their friends. One day, Rubens is taken for questioning and does not return.

Trailer

Reviews

  • CinemaSerf

    7
    By CinemaSerf
    The Paiva family leads an ordinary life until one night when a knock on their door changes things for ever. Rubens (Selton Mello) was formerly a Labour Party congressman in Brazil but now that the military have taken over, he is suspected of ties with the outlawed Communists. He is taken away and shortly after his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) and their elder daughter is also taken in for interrogation. For the next twenty minutes or so as she spends an intangible time in jail, we are exposed to some of the most effective cinematic menace I've ever felt. There is no graphic violence nor very little angry dialogue. Indeed, there isn't a great deal of actual physical threat at all. Her imprisonment and her deprivation of information is the stick they beat her with and it's profoundly traumatic. When she is released a week later, she returns home to find nobody has or will disclose any information about her missing husband. As time goes by she and their family have to come to terms with both the emotional and the practical implications as they try to look to the future, unsure of what's in their past. It's perhaps easy to forget amidst the militaristic history of 1970s South America that Brazil also had it's junta and it's fair share of bodies disappearing and that threat is never far away as the film proceeds to slowly follow her attempts to get to the truth, closure and to regain a positive sense of her own purpose. Torres is on great form here. She manages to imbue her characterisation with a fear but also with a sense of defiance. It's not reckless - she has a family to consider, but it's a determined effort to get to the facts, however unpleasant and however long it takes. The intensity of the main plot is diverted, occasionally, by the family and it's own aspirations and problems as they too must come to terms without a father whom they genuinely loved and by the denouement I felt quite drained by just the mere observation of their experiences. To live in a land where routine and permanent disappearances are every day occurrences is unrecognisable to most of us in the West. This reminds us to count our blessings.

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