33/24
Scenario
Brazil, 1971: a country in the increasingly tight grip of a military dictatorship
A mother is forced to reinvent herself when her family’s life is torn apart by an act of arbitrary violence. The first collaboration between Fernanda Montenegro and Walter Salles 26 years after the release of Glavni kolodvor (1998), in which Montenegro was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars.
Cited in Close-Up: Why do We Need the Venice Film Festival?
(2024). Take Me Back to Piauí Written by Juca Chaves Starring Juca Chaves.
Fernanda Torres plays the role of her life, almost a Greek heroine marked by tragedy, with subtlety, without ever falling into excess or caricature
The Brazilian film with the greatest international repercussion in recent years, winner of the Best Screenplay Award at the Venice Film Festival and nominated for an Oscar, I’m Still Here dramatizes the trajectory of the Paiva family between the arrest of Rubens Paiva, the father, and Eunice’s struggle after her husband’s disappearance. Walter Salles immerses the viewer in the intimacy of this family and makes him an accomplice, making him worry about the fate of each one, creating three-dimensional, real, credible characters.
He manages to transform this particular story into something universal, capable of communicating with audiences anywhere in the world
Detailed scenography, lean script, natural performances, hand-picked soundtrack, precise editing, everything contributes to the director being able to convey exactly what he set out to do. Since I knew the story, I had read the book on which the film is based, as well as reports about it, my attention was focused on the cinematic solutions used by the director.