We interview Fernanda Torres, Walter Salles, and Selton Mello about I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) on the red carpet at the BFI London Film Festival.
I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) is inspired by the real-life case in Brazilian history of the disappearance of Rubens Paiva and based on the book of the same title written by his son, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, in which he looks back on his childhood and what happened to his father.
Set in Brazil during the military dictatorship, I’m Still Here starts in 1971 when the life of the Paiva family is forever changed in one brief moment. Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) used to be a Labour Party congressman who left politics once the military dictatorship took power, he is now a civil engineer, respected by his peers and beloved by his family, made up of his five children and his wife Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres). But one day, Rubens is forcibly taken from his home and will never return, leaving his family to cope with his disappearance and the desire for justice and truth about his life, and presumed death.
During the red carpet for the film’s screening at the BFI London Film Festival, we talked with the director of I’m Still Here, Walter Salles, and the film’s leads, Fernanda Torres and Selton Mello. In the interview, they talk about what this film means to them and how they decided to portray this story and these characters on the big screen in the first place.
Walter Salles, Fernanda Torres & Selton Mello on the importance of telling this real-life story in I’m Still Here
How did you decide to make I’m Still Here and tell this story?
Walter Salles: This has been brewing in me for a long time because I got to know the characters in the film when I was thirteen. At the time, I was coming back to Brazil after five years abroad and I did not recognise the country as I landed. It was now run by a military dictatorship, and I was really at a loss at that age in that country. It was when I met the Paiva family, which is the focus of the film, that somehow helped me in the way of understanding what we could be as a country.
Something happens in the life of that family that creates [a separation between] a past and a future that needs to be reinvented. I’m Still Here is really informed by the wonderful book that one of the kids wrote about this, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, but also by what an extraordinary story of reinvention this was for the main character in the film. She could have bent to an authoritarian regime, but she did not; [instead,] the way she subverted the state and destroyed it little by little is completely different from what you would expect. That is something that touched me very much and I needed to find a way to bring it to the screen.
It took me seven years to do that. It is a lot, because at the end of the day, when you make a film, what you are going to show is just as important as what you decide not to tell, the negative spaces of the story. It required more maturity than I think I had before I began.
What drew you to this story and why did you decide to portray Eunice Paiva in I’m Still Here?
Fernanda Torres: I could not refuse it. It was such an honour and a surprise. Eunice Paiva is a woman whom nobody knew anything about. Her son had to write a book about her to tell the whole story, and that is when he discovered that she was the real heroine of the family. Not the father, who was a congressman and he tortured and killed, and not Marcelo, who became a famous writer. It is such a feminist story, but not by a woman who was at the front of the feminist movement; instead, she was always in the wings of the theatre.
She is such a strong woman: Eunice starts the film as a housewife, a mother of five who puts the children to bed and serves coffee but when her husband is killed, she has to be both the woman and the man of the family and even become a political leader. It is one hell of a story.
What does this story mean to you and what does it feel like to have I’m Still Here screened at the London Film Festival?
Selton Mello: This film portrays a real story, and I play Rubens Paiva who was murdered by the government. It is a heartbreaking story. I am really happy to be here, I am at the London Film Festival with two films this year, because I am also here with Bury Your Dead.
Fernanda Torres and Selton Mello on their respective characters and how they approached playing them in I’m Still Here
How did you approach the research for your characters, considering that these are real people?
Fernanda Torres: The book was a great source, but [so were] the interviews she did. I was overwhelmed by the way she was very feminine and always smiling but very persuasive. You could see how she approached her fight. To achieve it, I could not show self-pity in the pity; I had to be very honest in my acting. It really changed my way of acting because she never did what people expected her to do or how you would expect a character in fiction to behave. It made me think a lot about my own profession.
Selton Mello: I had a chance to meet the son, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, who also wrote the book. And he is actually my friend so we talked about this crazy idea of me portraying his missing father. It is very moving for me and I am very happy to see that the audience was touched by it.
Do you have a favourite scene in the film?
F. T.: I really like the scene when she comes back from prison, and she looks at herself in the mirror in the bathroom and she draws a bath while her daughter appears. For me, that is the core of I’m Still Here and the turning point in the movie. It is like she is looking at herself and saying: “It is never going to be how it was anymore.” I also like the fact that she remained silent: she never told the children what happened with the father. I thought a lot about why, there are so many reasons, and I think that scene is the turning point for her.
Walter Salles and Fernanda Torres on how they hope viewers will react to the film
Walter Salles: I think they are going to be travelling with the characters. There is an art critic who said that the most wonderful thing about films is that in cinema we are all travellers so I would love to invite the audience to travel with that one family across time, to be part of that story and realise how this woman managed to reinvent herself and protect her five children at the same time and feel energized at the end of the day by this story.
Fernanda Torres: I think it is a very honest movie: the camera and the music don’t try and influence you. I’m Still Here is a film about the family and resistance within the family. We have just been through a pandemic and are facing extremism on the left and on the right of the political spectrum, this idea that affection can hold us together is what I think audiences are already getting from it.
I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2024 and was screened at the BFI London Film Festival on October 13-14. Watch the video of our red carpet interview in the clip above and read our review of I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui)!
