In our interview with Walter Salles and Fernanda Torres, they discuss I’m Still Here, their approach to filmmaking, and the importance of showing Brazil’s history.
Directed by acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles, I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) starts in 1970 Brazil and tells the real-life story of the disappearance of former congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello). After he is forcibly taken away from his home by the authoritarian government of the time, his wife Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) – and mother of their five children – has to take care of her family and also fight to honour her husband’s memory.
I’m Still Here is based on the book of the same name by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the son of Rubens and Eunice Paiva, the latter of whom told the story of his father’s disappearance many years after it happened. During the BFI London Film Festival, we sat down with director Walter Salles and main actress Fernanda Torres for an interview to talk about their latest film, working together, and telling such an important story to the country’s history.
Walter Salles and Fernanda Torres on the importance of this story and how I’m Still Here relates to modern-day Brazil
I think that I’m Still Here is a really important story for the history of Brazil as a country. Did you feel a sense of responsibility in portraying it on the big screen and also for an international audience that might not be familiar with it?
Walter Salles: For me, the responsibility tripled because of my personal ties with the Paiva family. This would not have happened if it had been a fictional story, for example when I did Central Station [a fictional film about a former schoolteacher and her unlikely friendship with a poor 9-year-old boy]. But when I worked on The Motorcycle Diaries [a biographical road movie on the real-life expedition that Che Guevara and Alberto Granado undertook across South America in 1952], I learned from Alberto Granado, the real-life person who inspired the film, that it is more important to be faithful to the spirit of the story rather than to retrace exactly what happened.
We really wanted to be faithful to Eunice Paiva and to the honesty with which she responded to a tragedy that happened to her. We wanted to portray the way she reinvented herself and protected her five kids but also fought an authoritarian regime with weapons that came from her inner strength. This was very destabilizing and even ended up damaging the oppressive regime of the time in a way they were not able to face. It was very difficult to fight against Eunice.
We tried to be as faithful to her as we could. We interviewed all the people who were alive at the time and who had been part of that journey just to have as much information as we could beyond the book and the multiple layers that Marcelo’s story brought with it. We did a lot of research to stay true to what actually happened.
Ultimately, we thought we were doing a film about Brazil’s past, but somewhere along the way, we realised that the film was also about the present and eventually about our future. And not only in the case of Brazil. It is really about how these forces are still at play today, even if in different forms, and I’m Still Here can show us how to deal with them.
Fernanda Torres: It is about different forms of resistance now in our present.
W. S.: Eunice brings a proposal of resistance in this sense.
The final scene of I’m Still Here takes us back to present-day Brazil. What is the relevance of that and how important was it for you to create this connection between today’s world and what happened to Rubens Paiva?
W. S.: There is a really good way of explaining that, which is to go back to the book the film is based on. Fernanda does that wonderfully when she talks about why Marcelo wrote the book in the first place.
F. T.: Marcelo wrote the book because his mother was starting to show signs of Alzheimer’s. At the same time, he realised that the country was also losing its memory about what happened, so there was this strong parallel between Eunice Paiva and the country of Brazil. That is what prompted him to write this story and in the book, her personal life and the country mirror each other in so many moments.
When the Cold War struck Brazil – and all of South America – leading to various dictatorships both in Brazil and other countries, she had her husband killed. Later on, Eunice became a lawyer and Brazil as a country fought for a long time for the return of democracy and finally achieved it through the legal means of a constitution. Then, she started to fight for the indigenous people, which is also when Brazil started to discover the tribe living in the Amazon rainforest. And finally, when Brazil started to lose its memory of the past and the reasons why we fought for democracy, she also was losing her memory. She really is the female personification of Brazil.
W. S.: It was to really deal with the question of memory through the lens of a family. I’m Still Here deals with memory from a personal standpoint but also a collective one. It is the overlap of the two that triggered the end of the film. Even if it is only for a moment, Eunice comes back to the present despite losing the family memories she had fought so hard to keep alive. This is the moment that created the book itself because Marcelo witnessed it in real life and got the idea to write it.
F. T.: There is also the idea of the survival of the family. No matter what, even if they try to kill it, the love in that family is still there, along with their resilience and happiness.
W. S.: Yes, it is also about showing family, love, and memory as forms of resistance, all of these elements find their way into the story through multiple generations.
Walter Salles and Fernanda Torres on how they created an atmosphere of realism and authenticity in I’m Still Here
The way you portray the core family in I’m Still Here feels very real and authentic. How did you work on creating that family relationship on set, especially with the child actors?
Walter Salles: I met the Paiva family when I was 13 years old and I remember how authentic and radiant everything was in the day-to-day life of those five kids and their two parents. That house pulsated with life, with music, and with political discussions. I think that for the Paivas, living really was a form of resistance. So we had to find that element of reality on set, that empathy that they had towards themselves but also for their friends. It felt like each kid had their own tribe and all those groups intermingled in that family and in their home.
It was really important to make that house feel alive. So we had the actors portraying the family move into the house two months before the beginning of the shoot. We all literally started living in the house. In every single room, for example, the artwork that you see on the wall was made by the actors. That was how they started getting into the movie and so the experience became personal to each of them, to the point that we also started to cook in that house and really live in it.
When Marcelo – the kid who had lived through this experience and later wrote the book – visited the set, he said that the house actually smelled like his own house.
Fernanda Torres: It did not smell like a set. Normally, film sets have this mechanical scent but in the case of I’m Still Here, the house really smelled like a house.
W. S.: …and it felt like a house as well. The youngest kids were non-professional actors and they really were embracing day-to-day life as if it weren’t fiction because of the time we had spent in the house and the ties we had created before the shoot. It was about living under imaginary circumstances. The truthfulness and immediacy of the film come from living in the moment that was established prior to the shoot.
F. T.: We had this wonderful acting coach who created this sense of family with us. She never gave the whole script to the kids because she did not want the children to know beforehand that a tragedy was going to happen so they discovered it during the film. I remember when we filmed the scene in I’m Still Here when the family moved out of their home. Cora Mora [who plays Babiu, the youngest child] was sitting by the stairs and looking at the house being emptied and she was feeling sad because she understood that the adventure of working in cinema for the first time was over, so she was truly sad. And that is the take in the movie. Walter saw her and he decided to shoot it; it is her, but it is also the character.
W. S.: That is a stolen shot. It’s a long take and it is about longing, but it is also stolen. We were doing the previous scene when we realised that she was so into the moment and into this feeling that everything was over and that the family was leaving the house for good. She was in character but it was a moment that blended into her own experience at that moment, where she was living through something very similar to that character. So it was just two of us working on that scene because I brought the cameraman in and no one else actually realised we were shooting that. This happened a few times in the film, where something that seems so accidental comes together with the fictional narrative, which is ultimately what brings life to the film.
F. T.: All the scenes of the parties were very documentary-like, in a way.
W. S.: Yes, the parties and the raids also have a documentary quality to them as well. These are elements that allow life to breathe into the dramatic structure and ultimately make the film alive.
Walter Salles and Fernanda Torres on suggesting the torture and violence in I’m Still Here rather than showing it
It is obviously a movie about a tragedy, but I also think I’m Still Here is very hopeful and not entirely sad or always dramatic. In this sense, it is very powerful how we don’t see any of the actual violence, but it is mostly suggested. How did you make that choice and was this always the idea for the film?
Walter Salles: Yes because that stems from the book, which tells the story from Eunice’s point of view. When she is imprisoned, we are not seeing what is going on around her but, instead, we are only listening to what is happening in her surroundings. We can feel the violence and the torture around Eunice but cannot pinpoint exactly what is taking place. In cinema, what you don’t see is sometimes more powerful and more suggestive than what you do actually see.
It works from a sensorial standpoint because it starts to get under your skin and becomes extremely effective. This brought different perspectives to films about that era because it portrays the point of view of somebody who was innocent and who should not have been there. It was interesting because it forced you to understand what fear is when you don’t even know why you have been imprisoned. This is when Eunice truly understands what is at stake in the country; she understands it through a myriad of sounds.
Fernanda Torres: Yes but you could have chosen to do the pornographic torture scenes that you sometimes see in movies, but you didn’t in I’m Still Here, which is very effective, I think.
Walter Salles and Fernanda Torres on the history of Brazilian cinema and how they approached collaborating in I’m Still Here
If we look back at your careers, do you think something changed in terms of the state of Brazilian cinema? Is it maybe possible to make a film like I’m Still Here now because something has changed?
Walter Salles: Brazilian cinema was extraordinarily inventive before the military coup, it was the era of Cinema Novo. And then we had a period of resistance that happened during the 21 years where filmmakers did their best to speak about Brazil in a time of censorship. Many filmmakers, including some of our best, had to live in exile. Then they came back with the democratization of Brazil and you had a movement that really started the rebirth of Brazilian cinema and brought the possibility to have uncensored reflections of Brazil in filmmaking once again. For example in my case, this is how films like Foreign Land or Central Station were made. Then again, in recent years with the extreme right-wing regime, cinema was again shut down and it became very difficult.
So Brazilian cinema has gone through various periods of resistance and periods of silence. And now I see an extraordinary outburst of creative energy. This year, for example, Brazilian films were in every single major festival from Sundance to Berlin, from Cannes to Venice, or even Locarno, the London Film Festival and New York Film Festival.
Fernanda Torres: There were a lot of different regions portrayed as well.
W. S.: Yes, there is a lot of regional cinema made by great filmmakers and first-time filmmakers who are getting prizes everywhere. It happened in Cannes and Berlin, and also Venice with I’m Still Here. So there is a new generation taking over that is extremely talented, which makes me fairly optimistic. I say fairly because we never know what is going to happen in two years for example, but let’s just say that this is a moment where we can allow ourselves to be fairly optimistic.
I also wanted to ask about your collaboration in the film. Fernanda, I think your performance really stands out in the film and makes I’m Still Here such a beautiful and emotional movie. How did you collaborate on that to create what we see on screen?
F. T.: We worked together before in Foreign Land and I think that in his films Walter establishes that everybody is an auteur in their own way. The contribution that everyone brings makes us part of the movie. He is the maestro but everyone has to play their part. I was really surprised when he called me for I’m Still Here and I felt this burden to be faithful to this woman. I can’t say how we collaborate exactly, but it is something we did every day.
W. S.: It was a constant search but rooted in the idea that we wanted to be faithful and honest. Faithful to who Eunice was and her way of taking things in and actually fighting with her inner strength that never ceased to exist. It was as if she was led by a form of inner fire. On the other hand, the acting had to be restrained and faithful to her. We worked on the idea of subtraction all the time: how can we keep subtracting to reach the essence of things?
It was an endless search for the essence. This was the same for all the actors, the art direction, and the photography. The idea was never to be too showy and for none of the departments in the production or any actor to be in a solo performance, everyone had to be on the same wavelength, which was extraordinary.
F. T.: I never felt it before. The idea that restraining and having control of an emotion would allow it to grow so deeply within me is extraordinary. It changed the way I see acting because normally you want to show everything. But she couldn’t do that, Eunice had to remain in control, and that changed something within me.I remember doing the scene when Eunice discovers that Rubens is dead in I’m Still Here and she goes out for ice cream with her kids. After shooting it, I had to go inside for a moment and I was crying because I had to control such a strong feeling within me, I felt it so deeply.
Fernanda Torres on portraying Eunice Paiva on the big screen and sharing this role with her mother in I’m Still Here
Eunice is such a strong character and we see the story from her point of view. How important is it for you that we hear this story from her side and see a strong woman on the screen?
Fernanda Torres: Nobody really knew Eunice before this story. Even Marcelo did not know her for a long time. At first, he knew that his father had been killed but nobody knew what happened. When I read the book, I thought I was going to discover what happened to his father but I was surprised because the book is really about his mother. It is a son who only discovers in adulthood that the heroine in his family was that woman! And she was also very intelligent. She was a housewife from the fifties who had to learn how to deal with money, which she never did before, and how to take care of her children by herself. The silence that she chooses to take with the children is also parallel to the country and the silence that the authoritarian regime reserves for her.
Even this choice of remaining silent with her children was very mysterious to me. All the ways in which she reacts – never with self-pity or with melodrama – are very mysterious, strong, and mature. I think that sometimes we deal with these extreme moments in a very immature way. But Eunice was a mature woman, she had to get things done, and we have a lot to learn from her by discovering her story now in I’m Still Here.
Fernanda, you also shared this role with your mother. How significant is that to you and how did you decide to cast her as well as the older version of Eunice Paiva in I’m Still Here?
F. T.: It is very symbolic because me and Walter did Foreign Land (1995) together and Walter also did Central Station (1998) with my mother, so it felt very special to be all reunited for this. We are kind of a film family, so it is moving that we are here now. In Foreign Land, I saw that Walter really re-invented himself, he established his style in directing, very close to documentary with small crews and no big productions. He likes to have the actors and everybody in the production be an auteur by his side. And I could see him doing the same thing in Central Station. So yes, it is very moving.
I found out today that apparently a lot of people thought that I was playing older Eunice, that I was my mother; it is unbelievable!
Walter Salles: We had an extraordinary make-up artist but he was not responsible for that.
Thank you for speaking with us and congratulations on the movie!
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) opened in US theaters on January 17, 2025 and will be released in cinemas in the UK & Ireland on February 21, 2025. Read our review of I’m Still Here!
