How the film I’m Still Here forces Brazil to face a dictatorship’s legacy - Iqraa news

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – On January 8, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stood in the capital Brasilia and uttered three words that would tie past to present.

“Today is the day to say it loud and clear: We're still here.”

It was a reference to the biographical drama I’m Still Here, a film seen by over 4.1 million Brazilians, making it one of the country’s highest-grossing films ever.

On Sunday, it competes in three categories at the 97th annual Academy Awards, where it will be the first Brazilian film shot in Portuguese to be in contention for the much-coveted Best Picture Oscar.

But the movie is more than a box office success. For many in Brazil, it is a portal to confront a violent past, one that has yet to be fully reckoned with.

In 1964, the Brazilian army overthrew the government, plunging Brazil into a military dictatorship that would rule for more than two decades.

Journalism was censored. Suspected dissidents were detained by the thousands without trial. And hundreds simply disappeared in official custody, never to return. At least 434 people were killed, though some experts say the number could be as high as 10,000.

Few monuments or museums exist in Brazil to keep the memory of those events alive. And since the dictatorship passed a sweeping Amnesty Law in 1979, Brazil has never prosecuted any of the military officials responsible for the widespread human rights abuses.

Ivo Herzog, a human rights advocate, said the film has helped to pierce the silence surrounding that history.

“The main importance of the film is that it was able to break through the bubble,” Herzog said. “It brought a little of this indignation that we've been experiencing for so long to people who haven't lived this story, to people who don't understand.”

Ivo was only nine years old when his father, the prestigious journalist Vladimir Herzog, was tortured and killed by the military in 1975.

In October of that year, the elder Herzog answered a summons to testify before military officials. He left voluntarily for the army barracks. He never came home.

The military tried to frame Herzog’s death as a suicide: It even released a staged photograph of his body, hanging from a rope. But the attempted cover-up prompted one of the first major protests against the military dictatorship.

I’m Still Here chronicles a similar story. Directed by Walter Salles, it follows the real-life events of January 1971, when former Congressman Rubens Paiva was taken into custody, never to be seen again.

His wife, Eunice Paiva, emerges as the film’s heroine. Played by Fernanda Torres, Eunice faces arrest and surveillance as she seeks answers to her husband’s disappearance, all while raising five children.

Her decades-long quest for justice culminates with an unusual finale: the release of a death certificate, finally acknowledging Rubens’s death at the hands of the military. His body was never found.

I’m Still Here is based on a book by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the son of Rubens and Eunice.

Like Marcelo, author Liniane Haag Brum also grew up in the shadow of the military dictatorship. The last time her uncle and godfather Cilon Cunha Brum was seen by his family was at her baptism in 1971.

As a young activist, Cilon became involved in student protests against the military dictatorship in Sao Paulo. He later joined the Communist Party and the armed resistance movement.

The military was under orders to kill rebels, and Cilon disappeared in the Araguaia region in northern Brazil sometime between December 1973 and April 1974.

Decades later, Liniane says her uncle’s story has come to define her. She even wrote about him in a 2012 book called Before the Past. Watching the film I’m Still Here left her flooded with emotion.

“The film represents what a disappearance is. The pain. The vacuum,” Liniane said.

But the film has found resonance in the present as well as the past, as Brazil grapples with the fallout of a modern-day coup attempt.

Just last month, President Lula marked the second anniversary of a riot in Brasilia’s Three Powers Plaza, where protesters had hoped to spark another military uprising.

Thousands of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro descended on the plaza on January 8, 2023, just a week after Lula took office for a third, nonconsecutive term.

There, the rioters ransacked the Supreme Court, the National Congress building and the presidential palace in Brasilia, clashing with security officers. Police say the violence was part of a multipronged attempt to oust Lula and return Bolsonaro to power.

Lucas Figueiredo, a journalist and author of several books about the dictatorship, believes a lack of awareness about the past has allowed many Brazilians to romanticise the era of military rule.

“To this day, the military sees itself as having the right to attempt a coup d'etat in the 21st century. This is ample proof that no memory has been built up about those events,” Figueiredo said.

A former army captain, Bolsonaro has publicly defended the military dictatorship and expressed nostalgia for that period.

During his presidency, from 2019 to 2022, he also gutted the Amnesty Commission and the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances — two panels designed to document and respond to the human rights abuses of the past.

When asked about the film I’m Still Here, Bolsonaro told a Bloomberg reporter, “I’m not even going to waste my time.”

Figueiredo believes the fact that no officials were punished for their role in the military dictatorship has helped fuel the present-day turmoil.

“This created a dynamic of impunity which favours attitudes like the ones we saw on January 8,” Figueiredo said.

But Marcia Carneiro, who teaches history at the Fluminense Federal University, observed that the sense of impunity may be fading, given the push to hold Bolsonaro and his allies accountable.

On February 18, Brazil’s top prosecutor, Paulo Gonet, filed charges against Bolsonaro and 33 others, accusing them of plotting to overthrow the government. Bolsonaro could face decades in prison if convicted.

“There is a new awareness emerging that those who act against the rule of law can be punished. This is interesting and new in Brazil,” Carneiro said.

If Bolsonaro had been in power, Carneiro believes the film I’m Still Here may have been greeted with protests and even attacks.

She pointed out that, under Bolsonaro in 2019, protesters launched Molotov cocktails at the headquarters of the comedy group Porta dos Fundos, in the wake of a short Christmas film on Netflix that portrayed Jesus as gay.

But even the politics of the film may have blunted some of the right-wing criticisms. I’m Still Here focuses intimately on the power of family, sketching an idyllic home life disrupted by violence.

Experts say its emphasis on family dynamics over politics has made it appealing to a wide audience.

“Everyone has a family — a mother, a father — and is affected when they see them suffering. Viewers recognise the possibility of something like this happening in their home,” Carneiro explained.

As the film brings renewed attention to the toll of the dictatorship, it has also amplified pressure on officials to take action.

But President Lula has so far disappointed some survivors and relatives of the victims.

Last year, he blocked efforts to hold official remembrance events that would have marked the 60th anniversary of the coup, for fear of “inflaming” political tensions.

And while Lula reinstated the government commission on political deaths and disappearances last year, Herzog says it does not have enough funds to function correctly.

He would like to see the Brazilian government offer a public acknowledgement of the crime against his father, as well as implement revisions to the Amnesty Law.

“What are they waiting for? For everyone connected to that period to die?” Herzog said. “Brazil has a politics of forgetfulness, and we have evolved very, very little.”

But recent events have offered a glimmer of hope for relatives.

Last month, Brazilian notaries began issuing hundreds of corrected death certificates for victims of the dictatorship, stating that their deaths were not natural but caused by the state.

And in December, Supreme Court Justice Flavio Dino argued that the bodies that remain missing constitute an ongoing crime and therefore should not be covered by the Amnesty Law.

In explaining his rationale, Dino cited I’m Still Here, which he said has “moved millions of Brazilians and foreigners”.

“The story of the disappearance of Rubens Paiva, whose body was never found or buried, highlights the indescribable pain of thousands of fathers, mothers, brothers, children, nephews and grandchildren, who have never had their rights regarding their missing family members respected,” he said.

While government action to confront the dictatorship’s legacy is not guaranteed, Figueiredo said the kinds of conversations generated by the film are important.

“One step at a time,” he said.