A Brazilian Story, a Personal Reckoning
By Isabel Edge
As I sit in a Belfast cinema, watching I'm Still Here (2024) Brazil’s Oscar winning film, I feel something unexpected - recognition. The film, which explores Brazil’s turbulent past through the story of Eunice Paiva, is rooted in a history I’ve never lived but have always felt connected to. Being half-Brazilian but growing up in the UK, my relationship with my mother’s homeland has always been distanced. I know the language, the music, the food, but there’s always been a sense of wanting more. Watching I'm Still Here, that distance starts to close.
The film portrays Brazil’s military dictatorship with a rare balance, artistic, sensitive, yet unflinching in its truth. It doesn’t just recount history; it immerses you in it. Fernanda Torres delivers a breath-taking performance as Eunice Paiva, we see the personal cost of political oppression; the fear, the uncertainty, the resilience of those left behind. Eunice, a mother, a wife, and ultimately an activist, is at the heart of this story. Her husband, Rubens, a former congressman, is taken by the regime, leaving her to navigate grief, fear, and the suffocating reality of living under a dictatorship. The way the film lingers on moments of quiet strength and unbearable loss feels deeply human. It’s not just about politics; it’s about people, about mothers, daughters, and the weight of history on personal lives.
For me, the film also feels deeply personal in a way I hadn’t expected. It reminds me of my mother, of the strength she carries but rarely speaks about. My mother didn’t understand much of the dictatorship, as she was young, but she grew up in its shadow, in a Brazil that was still healing. Watching Eunice’s story unfold on screen, I start to see my mother differently. I think about all the stories she hasn’t told me about the Brazil she grew up in, all the pieces of our family’s history that I’ve never asked about.
The imagery of Rio is striking, both beautiful and unsettling. The film doesn’t romanticise the city but shows it as it is chaotic, vibrant, scarred by its past but full of life. I’ve been to Rio before but seeing it on screen like this makes me realise how much of my identity is tied to a place I’ve never truly called home. The narrow streets, the fading colonial buildings, the waves crashing against the shore, it all feels familiar.
Then there’s the music, Bossa Nova classics that my mother used to play when I was younger but that I never really paid attention to. Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil; their voices fill the soundtrack, their lyrics blending seamlessly with the film’s themes of resistance and resilience. These were songs that played in the background of my childhood, songs I dismissed as just another part of my mother’s world. But hearing them in this context, woven into the story of a woman fighting for justice, they suddenly feel more significant.
Beyond its historical significance, I’m Still Here teaches us about the importance of remembering. It reminds us that history isn’t just something we read in textbooks… it lives on in families, in unspoken stories, in the way people carry their past with them. It shows how oppression isn’t just about laws and governments; it’s about the everyday lives it disrupts, the families it tears apart, and the resilience of those who refuse to be silenced. More than anything, the film is about resistance. Not just the kind that takes to the streets, but the quiet resistance of remembering, of passing stories down, of refusing to let the past be forgotten.
As the credits roll, I sit for a moment, taking it all in. I'm Still Here isn’t just a film about history, it’s a reminder of where I come from. It makes me want to ask my mother more questions, to learn more about the Brazil she grew up in, to bridge the gap between where I was raised and where my family’s roots lie. Leaving the cinema, I feel different, closer to my mother, to Brazil, to a part of myself I hadn’t fully understood before.