The Devastating True Story Behind 'I'm Still Here' Makes the Best Picture Nominee Even More Powerful (2025)

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By Elisa Guimarães

Published Jan 27, 2025

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The Devastating True Story Behind 'I'm Still Here' Makes the Best Picture Nominee Even More Powerful (2)

Directed by The Motorcycle Diaries and Central Station's Walter Salles, Brazil's entry in the Best International Feature Film race — as well as a welcome but unexpected nominee for Best Picture — I'm Still Here is a movie about horror, tragedy, and resilience. Taking place in one of the darkest periods of the South American country's history, I'm Still Here tells the story of a woman whose husband is taken away never to be brought back by a bloodthirsty regime, and how she must manage her own pain and her children's in order to keep on living after facing such despair. The star of the picture is Fernanda Torres, a renowned Brazilian performer who is also aiming for a spot in the Best Actress category, having won the prize at the Cannes International Film Festival and, more recently, at the Golden Globes.

While awards are fun and give recognition to films, the importance of I'm Still Here doesn't necessarily rely on how many prizes it will take home. I'm Still Here, which is currently playing in American theaters, is also helping to shed light on an important part of history. After all, the story told by I'm Still Here is not only real but also a glimpse into the cruelty of the Brazilian military dictatorship, one supported by right-wing leaders such as former president Jair Bolsonaro. Torres' Eunice Paiva was one of the central figures in the fight for the so-called "disappeared," people murdered by the regime who were never officially declared dead. That scene in I'm Still Here in which she receives her husband's death certificate 25 years after his demise, in 1996? Yeah, that very much happened.

What Was the Brazilian Military Dictatorship Depicted in 'I'm Still Here'?

Perhaps it's best to start by explaining why Eunice took so long to get officially recognized as a widow. As Torres herself put it in her Jimmy Kimmel interview, the Brazilian military dictatorship, quite like other similar regimes that popped up around the globe between the 1950s and '70s, was a direct result of the Cold War. Fueled by anti-communist paranoia and American interests in the region, a group of civil and, most prominently, military agents conspired to oust then president João Goulart, who had come to power in 1961, after elected president Jânio Quadros' resignation. Through changes to the constitution, the banishment of all political parties except for a controlled opposition, the violent suppression of urban and rural guerrilla groups, and, of course, a great deal of torture and murder, the military was in power in Brazil from 1964 to 1985, when Tancredo Neves, the first civil president in 21 years, was elected.

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It's in this scenario that the story of Eunice and Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) takes place. A São Paulo congressman for the Brazilian Labor Party whose position was revoked after the 1964 coup, Paiva initially left the country, coming back the following year. An engineer, he rebuilt his life with his family in Rio de Janeiro, until he was taken in by the police in 1971. Paiva never returned home to his wife and five children. In 2014, a National Truth Commission investigation identified Army Lieutenant Antônio Fernando Hughes de Carvalho as the man who tortured and eventually murdered him. Like most murderers and tormentors who acted in the name of the military dictatorship, Carvalho was never held accountable for his crimes.

From 1971 to 1996, Eunice Paiva tried to prove her husband's death both for emotional and survival reasons. Without a death certificate, she could not access his bank accounts nor sell their joint property to provide for her family. This didn't stop her from becoming a great woman in her own right, though. As the movie shows, after relocating to São Paulo, she began working as a lawyer and devoted most of her efforts to the rights of Indigenous people, of whom over 8,000 were killed by direct or indirect action by the military dictatorship. She also became the face of the struggle to recognize the deaths of those dubbed disappeared between 1964 and 1985.

'I'm Still Here' Comes from a Very Personal Place

But, as Eunice got older, her memory started to dwindle. Again, as shown in the movie, Paiva suffered from severe Alzheimer's, which prompted her son, Marcelo Rubes Paiva, to start writing a book about their family's history. Marcelo, who had already become a household name in Brazil after releasing Happy Old Year, a memoir in which he chronicles the accident that rendered him paralyzed from the neck down, published I'm Still Here in 2015. Three years later, Eunice died at the age of 89.

While Salles and screenwriters Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega made some changes to the book — the family dog, Pimpão, for instance, never existed — the movie still comes from a very personal place for the Paiva family. It is not a documentary on the Brazilian military dictatorship nor an ensemble film purporting to tell the story from many different angles. Instead, it is a heartfelt and extremely claustrophobic tale about how people must go on even under the most horrifying circumstances.

I'm Still Here is currently playing in theaters in the U.S.

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