The FOCUS of Marina dal Lido

(from Venice Luigi Noera and Valentina Vignoli with the kind collaboration of Maria Vittoria Battaglia, Vittorio De Agrò (RS) and Marina Pavido – the photos are published courtesy of the Venice Film Festival)

The courage of Brazilian mothers and wives in Walter Salles's film denouncing the dictatorships of Latin America is worth the Golden Lion

SYNOPSIS: Brazil, 1971: a country in the ever-tightening grip of a military dictatorship. When his family's life is destroyed by an arbitrary act of violence, a mother is forced to reinvent herself.

Director's Statement

When I read Ainda estou aqui by Marcelo Rubens Paiva for the first time I was deeply moved. The story of the disappeared, the people torn from their lives by the Brazilian dictatorship, was being told for the first time from the point of view of those who remained. A woman's experience, Eunice Paiva, mother of five children, it contained both a story of surviving grief and a reflection of a wounded nation. It was also personal: I knew this family and was friends with the Paiva children. Their house has remained engraved in my memory. During the seven years I spent creating Ainda estou aqui, life in Brazil veered dangerously close to the dystopia of the 1970s, which made telling this story even more urgent.

REVIEW: Presented as a world premiere in the running for the Golden Lion at the 81st Venice Film Festival, I’m still here (original title: I'm still here) is the latest feature film directed by the famous Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles.

In I’m still here, therefore, Salles tells us the true story of Eunice Paiva in images (played by Fernanda Torres), wife of former member of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello). We are in the 1971. The woman lives together with her beautiful family in a house by the sea and everything seems to be going well, until the day some soldiers enter her house and ask her husband to follow them for a brief interrogation. The man, however, he will never return home and for a long time his family will not know what happened to him.

Eunice, therefore, she is a strong and extremely resilient woman. It's not easy to reinvent yourself, completely change her life and raise five children alone. Walter Salles wanted, so, pay homage to her and to all those women who, like her, during the dramatic Brazilian military dictatorship, they fought every day for their own good and for that of their loved ones.

A tal fine, in I’m still here, a direction made up of copious use of the shoulder camera and close-ups of the protagonist's face (always impeccable in every subtlest expression and never over the top) it turned out to be the winning solution for an important and impressive feature film, which sees its further strength in a solid narrative structure.

Walter Salles, therefore, pleasantly surprised us at this 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival. Twelve years after On the Road, here he is back in great shape. And who knows if the jury will also think so during the awards ceremony!

marina fears