Oscar-nominated film I’m Still Here confronts Brazil’s past
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Al Jazeera Podcasts. Today, Brazil's authoritarian past gets its Oscar moment. This is going to have a long impact on Brazil's culture because the movie is not going to fade away after the Oscars. How the film I'm Still Here is confronting Brazil's dark history and what it could mean for the country if it wins this Sunday. I'm Kevin Hurtin, and this is The Take.

My name is Maurício Savarese. I'm an AP reporter based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I cover both beats, politics, general news, sports, and also a bit of the entertainment scene with Amstel here, up for these three Academy Awards and producing such a stir in the country.

All right. So, Maurício, before we get into the details of the movie, I'd love to just have you talk about the buzz that I'm Still Here has created in Brazil. This is the first time Brazil has been nominated in the Best Picture category. Oh, my God. Wow. Oh, my God. Our first nomination.

It's nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. And I'm guessing people across the country are going to be paying very close attention to the award show. Is it fair to say Brazil has Oscar fever?

Oh yeah, social media playing a massive role. You have clips of Fernanda Torres, the leading actress of the movie, doing different things, not only in the movie, but also in her Brazilian career, which includes soap operas, TV series, and that's all become memes. It's important to have a film like this to remind us that no, maybe things get worse for everyone under an authoritarian regime and for those living in such countries.

And that has pushed the movie to even more people that maybe wouldn't have watched in the first place. And now they are part of the 5 million people that have watched it. And one of the biggest things in Brazilian culture is the carnival parade we have in Rio every year for almost 100 years.

On Sunday, when the Academy Awards are on, there's going to be a TV screen, a giant TV screen at the Rio Samba Drone, which is where the ring takes place, just to show if I'm still here wins any Oscars. It's going to be on and people are going to be on the stands watching and possibly celebrating if they do win any of the three awards they're up to.

It's amazing. Okay. So the film deals with the military dictatorship in Brazil, which lasted from 1964 to 1985, and specifically the issue of forced disappearances during that time. The story begins in Rio de Janeiro in 1970 at the beachside home of the Paiva family. So tell me about this family and what happened specifically to the father of the family, Rubens Paiva.

Well, it's important to bear in mind that this is a known family in Brazil. The author of the book, I'm still here, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, is the son of Rubens Paiva. That's also partly why this has become such a big hit. This former congressman, Rubens Paiva, who had his seat taken by the military dictatorship right after it was installed in 1964.

He left Brazil for a while, fearing, of course, persecution and other risks to him and his five children and his partner.

And then when they return, there's an appearance of normality. I mean, the 1970 World Cup, which Brazil won with Pelé on the team doing incredible things, gave Brazilians a very big sense of normalcy, even though the military dictatorship was actually cracking down and going at many of its opponents. And Rubens Paiva was one of these people who returned to Brazil because they thought it was reasonably safe to be here.

But then after a series of events that put the military dictatorship under big pressure, there were kidnappings of ambassadors and diplomats from other countries, they decided to really go at

their opponents. And the movie shows a bit of that atmosphere in Rio. People could still enjoy the beach. They could still party. But the increase on security and the increase on the apparatus of the military dictatorship was evident in 1971. And then even people who didn't even have much of a big role fighting the dictatorship were

were being persecuted. And this family was living in Rio in a very bohemian house with a lot of people just going there for parties. And that includes the film director, Walter Salles, who was one of the kids that used to go to this house, beachfront house in Leblon, upscale neighborhood in Rio. And then this lawmaker, former lawmaker, disappears.

And the consequences of that were discussed for decades. Not only because he was known, but also because he was not the only one. There were many other people who disappeared who had a public profile. And that gave people the impression that the dictatorship did whatever they wanted at that point.

Yeah, at one point, just these men come to the house, they take him away, they say he needs to do a deposition, and then he's just never seen from again. So Rubens Paiva became famous. He's one of the most notable of the disappeared, as you mentioned. And that's mostly because of the efforts of his extraordinary wife, Eunice Paiva, who's played by Fernanda Torres. She's nominated for Best Actress, and she's, you know, I don't have to tell you, she's just absolutely magnificent in this movie.

How well known were these two women before the film's release? And why do you think the story of Eunice Paiva and Fernanda Torres' performance is resonating the way that it is?

Well, I think that Onísio Paiva was somewhat known, but only by people who were actually involved in the discussions of the military dictatorship and its effects on Brazilian population. At that time, people just knew her as the widow of Gubes Paiva and didn't follow as much whatever she did to get the death certificate that she desperately needed to operate the family's finances and do important things with it.

She was seen more as a side character. She was not front and center. Wow. So I think that this movie definitely changes the perception of this woman and how big she was. She wasn't a household figure before. And I'm sure that she's become that because of Fernanda Torres' impressive acting and because of the impact that the film has created.

The film does a great job capturing what life is like during this time period, during this military dictatorship, which was not long ago, I should say. It was certainly during my lifetime. But you really see the fear, right? The oppressive presence of the military everywhere. There's helicopters overhead. There's troop carriers going by. Is this a time period that people talk about in Brazil? How large does it loom in Brazil's collective memory?

Well, you can definitely say that former President Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2019, basically because a part of the population believed that the military dictatorship wasn't as bad as

as people said, and not as bad as Brazil's Truth Commission, which investigates the crimes of this very dictatorship, that those people who disappeared and died, that that wasn't such a big of a problem. And you would say that there's a lot of people in the military who still believe that, that they will call the 1964 coup a

revolution and you still hear that narrative and that movie makes it very different for those who want to advocate for that because it just shows that regular families like the Paivas they could suffer as well even though they were not involved in armed activities, they were not involved in the kidnappings of the diplomats in Rio or in Sao Paulo at the time so it's made a big impact in that sense. Obviously you would say that there's a lot of people who support

what happened in the military dictatorship and did not watch the film. So that's definitely the case. But I would say there's moderates, people who are not much to the left, not progressives who watch the movie. And they said, well, this really produces an impact because they can see regular people can suffer too when there's an authoritarian regime.

Yeah. So, Maurício, we talked about how popular this movie has become in Brazil. It's something people are very proud of. I've read about some people who have draped Brazilian flags outside their homes in preparation for the Oscars, if it's like a big football match or something.

There are tons of these videos of people on social media. They're celebrating the movie in various ways, like dressing up as old Fernanda Torres characters, reacting to the news when the film was actually nominated for these Oscars, you know, explosions of celebrations.

How do you explain something so dark, a film about a national trauma like this, turning into such a celebration in Brazil?

Well, I didn't see people putting flags out the window. But what I did see was people who wouldn't go to movie theaters for years and they just decided to go because there was this craving to watch this. This was not only for the buzz and Brazilians love to follow social media buzz.

but also because the last few years were really harsh on Brazil politically. You would say there's people who were feeling they were being back in the 60s because of the narratives of communism and radicalism taking over. They're going to the movie theaters at first because of political reasons,

but they're also leaving it with the impression that they spent two hours of their time watching something that was, of course, sad, important for our memory, but also a lifting experience because of Eunice Paiva's resilience and Fernando Torres' acting. And the fact that they've managed to watch a beautiful movie that has made them happy

to go and to speak about it. And also, Brazil's love validation. I mean, this is a Portuguese-spoken language running for three Oscars. So it isn't as if this is a done deal for Fernanda Toi. She's going to win. Even if she doesn't win, she's going to continue being beloved and she's making Brazil proud abroad. We'll have more with Maurício after a quick break. This week on True Crime Reports...

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Okay, so Mauricio, let's talk a little bit about the timing of this film. In Brazil, you recently had four years of the far right Jair Bolsonaro as president, who, you know, I think it's safe to say had authoritarian tendencies. Just last year, which is when I'm Still Here actually came out, Bolsonaro was formally accused of plotting an alleged coup after he lost the 2022 elections.

Obviously, Bolsonaro is never mentioned in the film, but do you feel like he's always right beneath the surface here?

Yeah, director Walter Sala said he did not want that movie to come out during the Bolsonaro presidency, which could have been extended if he hadn't had a narrow loss to incumbent Luis Nascimento Silva in the 2022 election. So this could have been a movie that never existed or that was going to be produced only years from now. And who knows what the impact would have been if that was the case. I'm sure that maybe Fernando Torres, who's

she might not be in that movie and it might have been a totally different impact. Bolsonaro said a couple of days ago for the first time that he didn't see the movie and he wanted to be in it. Very strange statement. Really? Yeah. He didn't really go much into it.

But many of his allies have already criticized it, said it's leftist propaganda. They've attacked the author of the book and the family. Over the years, Bolsonaro has been a very vocal antagonist of the Paiva family. When Congress inaugurated the statue of Rubens Paiva, because he was the only lawmaker who was killed by the dictatorship,

Bolsonaro showed up in spats on the statue. Wow. That was in 2014. He said that Paiva was an ally of the communists, of the guerrillas of that time, which is a claim that was never proven. And a lot of people say it's 100% false.

But he's been very vocal about the Paivo family in the past, not as much about the film. And the fact that everyone involved is also seen as more progressive also makes an impact and a case for him to say, well, you don't really need to watch this. This is propaganda of people who are against me. And I'm sure that many of his allies are telling that to their supporters.

Beyond Brazil, we're seeing this rise in right-wing authoritarianism globally, obviously. I couldn't help but think that some people were watching this movie thinking, oh, isn't this horrible? What's happening to this family? While others may have looked at the repression as kind of like a model...

for doing business, right? And you talked about the backlash that this film has had from the right. But I wonder if there's also a sense in Brazil that there's pride from Brazilians that they're taking this message to an international audience, an American audience, and saying, "This is how we do things in Brazil. This is how we fight back against these forces."

Yeah, I think that's true. And it's also something interesting that Fernando Torre said a while ago that this movie also manages to talk a little about Brazilian culture and to get it across. I mean, the music, the colors and all of that. And

The fact that we Brazilians know a lot about American culture, French culture, German culture, and we know relevant things from these cultures, and we don't get the same back, and people don't know as much about Brazilian culture, we kind of think people are missing out. So this movie became sort of an opportunity, as Fernando said,

to show Brazil to a different audience and say, well, there are things that happen here, but look at how we deal with some of those. I mean, just the fact that you come from the land of soap operas doesn't mean we're crying all the time. I mean, I don't think...

Fernanda Chades any tears in this movie she's her performance is brilliant also because of that about the contrition and the way that she portrayed herself and I think that Brazilians are proud of that they're proud of seeing a different face of Brazil being shown to the media abroad of course carnival is a part of it soccer is a part of it but we have more things here too

So the movie ends in 2014, actually, and this is a bit of a spoiler, but not too bad. With the main character, Eunice Piva, she's very old and she has Alzheimer's. And I suppose the symbolism is that it's not just her that is losing her memory, but also the country as well, or it might be losing its memory. Is that what you take away? That unless you relentlessly confront your past, that history is bound to repeat itself?

Well, that's partly why a lot of people say Bolsonaro managed to get elected president because, well, he was for many years advocating for military dictatorship wasn't as bad. And then when he governed, a lot of people said, well, why do we have about 6,000 military personnel working in government? And their vision was spread throughout government because of that, too. And I'm sure that some people like that. They want more of that and others resented it.

His election defeat was very narrow, was about 1.5%. So there's still a lot of audience for a strongman. There's a lot of interest in people who can be decisive about things and not as thoughtful as some other politicians would say.

My impression is that this is going to have a long impact on Brazil's culture because the movie is not going to fade away after the Oscars. And it's going to be a part of the conversations of younger generations for a very long time. And maybe that plants the seeds for more liberty and more freedoms when you talk about politics. It's not as much about having a hard fist on politics. It's more about freedom.

establishing a dialogue. And that's what the movie in the end advocates for. Okay. So I'm pulling up the Oscar odds here. Looks like it's very long odds for a best picture. And even for best actress for Fernanda Torres, that's going to be tough because Demi Moore is the favorite. But an international feature, it's got a fighting chance, 33%.

is where it's at. So I'm still here winning the Oscars. What does that mean for the Brazilian film industry and Brazil as a whole? I know it's already a festive time with Carnival going on. How much more of a party does this turn into if this movie wins?

Well, if it wins, I'm sure there's going to be more money for Brazil's film producing coming from abroad, from within, from wherever. Maybe not as much money from abroad, but I'm sure there would be still money coming from Brazilian companies, big ones like TV Global, other producers. I'm sure they're going to invest a lot in movie theaters because they see people are going to the theaters to watch Brazilian culture.

I think there's going to be a lot of parties during Carnival. Carnival only finishes on Wednesday. So there's a lot of time to party if they win any Oscars. And if they don't, I mean, there's going to be people drinking anyway. I think that's good to be the answer. Yeah. The party's going to happen either way. Yes. How much crazier can you get than Carnival? It's the craziest there is. So there's not much to add to it. Yeah, right. Okay. Yeah.

Mauricio, thank you for coming on The Take. My pleasure. And that's The Take. This episode was produced by Ashish Malhotra, Sonia Bhagat, and Amy Walters, with Philip Llanos, Spencer Klein, Marcos Bartolome, Hannah Shokir, Melanie Marich, Sarey El-Khalili, and me, Kevin Hurtin. It was edited by Kyleen Kang. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abusalah and Mohanad Almelhem.

Alexandra Locke is the take's executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. We'll be back tomorrow.