I'm Still Here
Walter Salles’ first feature in 12 years opens with a sublime Super 8 love letter to the fleeting, precarious beauty of Rio 1970.
Directed by Walter Salles
Starring: Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Fernanda Montenegro
Released: 21 February 2025
9/10
Rio de Janeiro, 1970, is a city bordering on paradise: the surf rolls in on Leblon beach while families play volleyball, Gal Costa and Tom Zé play on the radio, while Jairzinho, Pelé and Rivellino are perfecting football…Paradise but for the small matter of the murderous military junta ruling Brazil.
Walter Salles’ first feature in 12 years opens with a sublime Super 8 love letter to the fleeting, precarious beauty of the moment. It’s filmed by Vera, eldest daughter of the Paiva family, as a memento of the city before she begins her own exile in London, where she’s hurriedly despatched as her parents begin to sense the trouble approaching. But you can feel Salles’s own longing for the moment - in 1970 he was 14 and a family friend of the Paivas, part of the bohemian community who partied in their beautiful, bustling beachside house.
Their idyll is laid to waste when Rubens, the charming, goofball, quietly radical paterfamilias, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of assisting resistance forces. He puts on his suit and tie as he is taken in for questioning, and is never seen again.
Fernanda Torres is stupendous as Eunice, the wife and mother who doggedly, determinedly packs up her family and begins the slow process of fighting for his release, and then, finally, for some official acknowledgment that he was ever detained at all. And Fernanda Montenegro, the actress’s own mother, and the star of Salles’ breakthrough Central Station (1998), is heartbreaking as the older Eunice, finally vindicated, surrounded by the flourishing extended Pavia family, but stunned into silence as her mind and body finally fail her.
