I'm Still Here
After her husband, a former congressman, is seized and disappeared under Brazil's dictatorship, a mother of five holds her family together and pursues the truth.
Golden Globe, Best Foreign Language Film winner, 2025
I'm Still Here is set in early 1970s Rio de Janeiro, where Eunice Paiva lives with her husband Rubens, a former congressman, and their five children. When Rubens is taken by the military regime and never returns, Eunice is left to protect her family, endure her own detention, and spend years seeking acknowledgment of what happened to him. The film follows her across decades of quiet, determined endurance.
It is a portrait of mourning without a body, of grief held open by the state's refusal to confirm a death, and of memory kept alive as an act of resistance. It shows how a family absorbs an absence that is never explained and how one woman carries it with composure and resolve. It won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2025, and is based on the memoir Ainda Estou Aqui by Marcelo Rubens Paiva.
Director
Walter Salles
Walter Salles is a Brazilian filmmaker, born in 1956. His work follows people who travel in search of connection, often forming surrogate bonds in the absence of a parent. In Central Station, a weary woman accompanies an orphaned boy as he looks for the father he has never met; the film won the Golden Bear at Berlin. He also directed The Motorcycle Diaries and I'm Still Here, which turns toward a family marked by a father's disappearance.
Details
- 2024
- Brazil
- Portuguese
- Film