‘Ainda estou aqui": the shadow of the disappeared.

After an absence of more than ten years, director Walter Salles is back in cinemas with Ainda estou aqui (I'm still here). After the success of ‘Diarios de motocicleta’, which retraced the youth of Che Guevara, Salles returns with a personal film about the struggle for truth and freedom in the midst of the Brazilian dictatorship. The film was both acclaimed by the critics and a popular success, in Brazil and worldwide.

Rio de Janeiro, 1970. The film opens with the classic image of a Brazilian paradise: a deserted Leblon beach, a swimmer floating in the first rays of the morning sun. This idyllic setting is abruptly interrupted by the sound of aircraft engines. Unfortunately, these are not the advertising planes that now cross the beaches of the Cidade Maravilhosa every five minutes. The rumbling noise was caused by a military aircraft from a country under dictatorship. A few days later, Ruben Paiva, the swimmer's husband, was taken away by the police and never returned home.

‘Ainda estou aqui’ plunges viewers into a period of Brazilian history that is little known to European audiences. While the regimes of Pinochet and the Argentine military junta have often been the subject of films or documentaries, the Brazilian dictatorship has not received the same narrative treatment.

Walter Salles sets out to recreate this period through the lens of intimacy. He decided to adapt for the screen the story of the Paiva family, a bourgeois Carioca family who lived through the horror of the forced disappearances of the Brazilian dictatorship. This story touches Salles intimately, as the director knew the Paiva family well. This true story, first told by the son Marcelo in an autobiography, is finally masterfully brought to the screen.

In the face of horror, how do those who remain survive? This is the question the director sets out to answer in ‘Ainda estou aqui’. I'm still here. The film focuses on those who remain and on what is left of those who disappeared. What is still here despite the disappearance. In this way, the horror of the dictatorship is not dealt with head-on, but as an undercurrent, on the effect it has on the daily lives of the people who endure it. The film highlights scenes of great family happiness, subtly interrupted by mini-details, constant reminders that we are observing the daily life of a dictatorship.

The film is currently enjoying immense critical and popular success, both in Brazil and abroad. It received a standing ovation lasting more than ten minutes at the Venice Film Festival and will represent Brazil at the 2025 Oscars. The lead actress, Fernanda Torres, was awarded the Golden Globe for "Best Actress in a Drama" a few weeks ago. The film is fortunate to count on this exceptional actress to portray a woman forced to change her destiny and become a political activist in spite of herself. Confronted with an inexplicable horror, the character played by Torres tries to keep up appearances, to reunite the family, inflicting on herself a self-control that prevents the film from lapsing into pathos. After her husband's disappearance, Eunice Paiva became a leading Brazilian lawyer who fought for justice for the families of victims of the dictatorship. 25 years after her husband's disappearance, she finally obtained his death certificate from the Brazilian authorities. She died in 2018 without ever seeing anyone convicted for the murder of Ruben Paiva.

‘Ainda estou aqui’ was very well received by the Brazilian public, with over 5 million viewers already. Despite threats of a boycott from the country's far right, the huge success of Salles' film shows a rather reassuring consensus in Brazilian society about the importance of still tackling this type of subject in the cinema.

Over and above the strength of the Paiva story and Fernanda Torres' masterful performance, “Ainda estou aqui” is a real piece of cinema. The recreation of the atmosphere of Rio in the 70s is masterful: its music (with a soundtrack alternating between Tom Zé, Gal Costa and Caetano Veloso), its sets, its light captured on 35mm film to give it the feel of a photo album. The script centres on a brightly lit house where the curtains close, silence falls and smiles freeze as soon as someone disappears. In Salles' own words, “dictatorship wins when it has begun to take away the voice of those who suffer it”.  

Few Brazilian films make it to European cinemas. ‘Ainda estou aqui’ is a wonderful exception, with a vibrant film, an inspiring story and a message that is sadly all too topical. Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón considers ‘Ainda estou aqui’ to be his favourite film of 2024, describing it as follows: ‘To see a film by Walter Salles is to be embraced by generosity, to experience a gravitational force that lifts you up and anchors you like an invisible but undeniable force’.

To be seen in cinemas from Wednesday 26 February.