Movie Review – I’m Still Here

I’m Still Here (2025)
Written by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega
Directed by Walter Salles

In 1964, Brazil experienced a military coup, supported by U.S. forces, against then-president João Goulart and his proposed social reforms. These reforms, including land redistribution, expanded labor rights, and the nationalization of key industries, alarmed conservative politicians, business leaders, the Catholic hierarchy, and much of the officer corps, who framed his government as a step toward communism. The U.S.-backed dictatorship dismantled democratic institutions and installed an authoritarian regime that would last twenty-one years. The dictatorship ruled through censorship, political repression, torture, and forced disappearances, while promoting a narrative of “order” and economic modernization. Though the regime oversaw periods of rapid industrial growth, these gains were unevenly distributed and came at the cost of civil liberties, deepening inequality and leaving lasting scars on Brazilian society that continue to shape its politics and collective memory today.

This is the background for Walter Salles’ film I’m Still Here, set in Rio de Janeiro in 1970. It follows the experiences of Eunice Paiva, the wife of former Brazilian congressman Rubens Paiva. Six years after the coup, Eunice is trying to raise their five children as normally as possible despite the growing tensions across the nation. Rubens continues to support political dissidents despite no longer holding elected office, and this draws the attention of the dictatorship. News spreads of kidnappings targeting prominent former liberal and left-leaning political figures, and one day men arrive at the Paiva home, overturning it in search of documents. Rubens is taken and disappears into the gears of the machine. Newspapers publish stories claiming Rubens and others have fled the country, but Eunice does not believe her husband would abandon his family. This begins her lifelong commitment to learning what happened to him and proving he never turned his back on them.

There is a mindset I’ve noticed among my fellow Americans about what an authoritarian regime would be like in reality. The irony is that this understanding has been shaped by national institutions with a vested interest in promoting an inaccurate picture of such a system. Because class divisions are constantly obscured by mass media and government narratives, we fail to recognize that a dictatorship expands in layers, taking control from the bottom up.

This is the core idea of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous poem: they begin with those who are most marginalized and move steadily toward the center. Families like Eunice’s would be aware of the military junta’s actions because they are intellectuals, but they would not experience its brutality viscerally at first. I don’t think the reader has to strain to see how this pattern is already visible on the streets of the United States, with the “illegal” immigrant positioned as the first target of roundups and disappearances.

Eunice tries to create a warm, loving space in her home as a refuge for her children from the creeping reality outside their doors. The film opens with Vera, the eldest child, being detained alongside her friends during a police traffic stop. From the outset, we understand that Eunice will fail to fully protect her children; and that this is not a moral failing. No parent could completely shield their children from such tyrannical power.

This is where the film illuminates the true role of a loving parent. A parent’s core responsibility is not to protect a child from every threat the world presents, but to prepare them to face those challenges when they arise and to provide a place of unconditional love when harm occurs. By the end of the film, Eunice becomes a striking portrait of a flawed but deeply loving parent.

Fernanda Torres is the heart of this film. Without her performance anchoring the story, the film would have been good, but not great. In many reviews, I’ve spoken about my personal benchmark for great acting: how a performer handles moments without dialogue. Torres is given many such scenes, where there is nothing to say and all she can do is absorb the pain of loss or endure the intrusion of regime thugs who refuse to leave her home.

Eunice’s strength is not the familiar pop-culture “badass” cliché often used to signify so-called “strong women,” which typically amounts to women adopting the brutish violence associated with men. Instead, her strength is a relentless determination. Time and again, people urge Eunice to back off or stop for the sake of her family. But everything she does is for their sake; to prevent the dictatorship from smearing her husband’s name in the eyes of their children. The regime has no right to do so, regardless of how many guns it carries or how many bureaucratic gears it grinds her through. Eunice’s power lies in her ability to remain warm and resolute in front of her children, knowing they must learn how to carry on in the face of horror.