‘I’m Still Here’ Began As A Personal Story & Turned Into A Cultural Conversation In Brazil – Contenders Los Angeles

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The real world story behind I’m Still Here, which chronicles how a Brazilian family had their life upended when the patriarch, a former congressman, goes missing in the 1970s, held such a deep personal meaning for director Walter Salles he felt compelled to depict it on film. But he never expected that the resulting movie might be an agent of change in his home country.

“When I was 13 years old, I became friends with the five kids of this family,” Salles revealed during a panel conversation at the Deadline Contenders Film event on Saturday alongside lead actress Fernanda Torres, who plays Eunice Paiva, who reinvented herself as an activist following her husband’s disappearance.

“I was enamored by them, enamored by the vividness of the heart of this family, enamored by the affection of the heart of this family, enamored of the joy that pulsated in that house – a joy that was really the reverse angle of the military dictatorship that ruled the country at that time,” Salles continued. “And for two years I was informed by that family. And one day something tragic happened and that family was robbed of the joy that you sense in the first act of the film. Thus started the long journey to tell this story 40 years later.”

“I cannot refrain from telling it: it was an urgency to tell it,” said Salles. “But at the very start of this, I thought we were offering a reflection of our past, because Brazilian cinema didn’t look too much at the 70s. And I thought that there was the need to do that, but thinking at the beginning that it would reverberate the past. And then suddenly the whole political situation in Brazil and in the world changed. And we realized that we were doing the film about the present as well. And that realization did hit all of us in front of the camera, but behind the camera as well.”

Much to Salles’ surprise and delight, he’s seen the film spark an unexpected conversation in Brazil since its premiere there. “The cinemas started to be completely filled, and we became the number one film in Brazil last weekend – we’re a little bit flabbergasted by that, we confess, because there was a Marvel film in number two!” he laughed.

“But much more important than the box office is the fact that people are going to the cinemas again to have a collective experience,” he continued. “People are staying in the film until the very end of the credits and they’re writing in social media what the experience was in the screening room that they were at.”

“It is becoming a kind of cultural, sociological political phenomenon,” he said. “We couldn’t anticipate that. And it made me think now that literature, cinema, music, can be incredible instruments against oblivion.”

Check back Monday for the panel video.

The presenting sponsor for this year’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles is United for Business. Sponsors are Eyeptizer Eyewear, Final Draft + ScreenCraft, and partners are Four Seasons Maui, 11 Ravens and Robina Benson Design House.

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