Fernanda Torres stars as Eunice Paiva in “I’m Still Here,” © Sony Classic Pictures, 2024.
“I’m Still Here” and the Oscars
As a good chunk of the world tunes in to the Oscars tonight, talks about which movie deserves what award have been sounding off across friend groups and social medias for months ever since the nominations had been revealed.
We all have our picks, and may treat the Oscars as nonchalantly as any other yearly awards ceremony, but there happens to be one film out of the bunch whose nominations have been particularly important for Brazil.
Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” is that film. Released late in 2024 first to Brazilian theaters, the movie stars Fernanda Torres and Selton Mello, two members of Brazil’s acting royalty. It has been called a “docudrama,” covering the life of prominent Brazilian human rights advocate Eunice Paiva. It adapts the memoir of the same name, written by Paiva’s son, Marcelo.
Paiva is of no small order in Brazilian culture. Her story is one known by most people in the country, especially now after the film about her has returned $29.8 million against its $1.48 million budget. But it’s not about the money that makes this film’s success so significant.
Its popularity is important, but what matters is that this story, the one of Eunice Paiva, was the one to receive global attention and praise. Her story is one that personifies the horrors committed by the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964-1985).
“I’m Still Here” is the first Brazilian movie to receive the Oscars’ nomination for best film. The fact that it scored such a nomination means enough to the Brazilian people. For a country that continues to live within the legacy of an oppressive regime, the chance to process that history as the world watches it is an award in its own right.
The story of Brazil during its military dictatorship is one of the common people fighting against insurmountable odds. Eunice Paiva was one of many critics, many of whom were protesting through the creation of amazing, generational music. But no matter the context, the story of the people who faced Brazil’s military dictatorship is a shining example of the resilience and determination of the human spirit.
A Photo of the Paiva Family, retrieved from a New York Times article Marcelo Paiva wrote in 2018.
A Família Paiva
Within the sun-kissed beachfront neighborhood of Leblon in Rio de Janeiro, the Paiva family had finally settled down. Rubens, the family patriarch, had just landed a job as a civil engineer following a nine-month stint of self-imposed exile in Yugoslavia and Paris. Eunice, ever the loving matriarch, was just happy he was back.
The year was 1965. It had been almost a year since President João Goulart was deposed. The military assumed full control of the country, and established itself as a regime. But this did not faze the Paivas. While Rubens was a former left-wing congressman whose tenure was revoked by the dictatorship, all that mattered to them was keeping their children happy.
For five years, the Paivas lived in relative harmony in Rio. Eunice and Rubens had the pleasure of seeing their five children grow up in such a beautiful neighborhood. Vera, Eliana, Ana, Marcelo, and Maria, you couldn’t ask for a better place to live. The nearest beach was a minute-long walk away, and there was no shortage of other kids who wanted to kick around a soccer ball or explore the many streets of their city.
But as time went on, things changed. Ever since the leading generals of Brazil’s armies took over, their military police became increasingly hostile. Checkpoints peppered the highway exits and entryways, not only in Rio, but the entire country itself. Arrests were being made, people were being detained. You were lucky if you were even told what you were being arrested for.
Vera, the oldest of the children and partway through her academic career, knew full well of the police’s corruption. In this way, she took after her father. But she also lived life on the fringe, making friends within the “tropicalia” movement, a group of young people the average American might mistake for a hippie.
“Marginais,” or delinquents, as people like Vera were called, were often among the most mistreated by the military police. Their long hair, unconservative fashion and loud music displeased the regime. It got to a point where they detained and exiled two of the most prominent “tropicalians,” the popular musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
The two men were sent to London, which, by coincidence, was where Vera would end up going for a cultural exchange program in January 1971. But back home, things took a turn for the worse.
On the 21st of that same month, a group of plain-clothed military police detained Rubens in his home, in front of his family.
As they saw his head being shoved down into the backseat of a licenseless car, none of them knew it would be the last time they saw him. Days without Rubens turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years.
Eunice and her children would never receive an update about their loved one’s status, and by the time the dictatorship dissolved in 1985, the silence spoke loudly enough. Alongside 433 other people, Rubens was detained, tortured and executed by the military dictatorship.
But for the Paivas, they wouldn’t hear this confirmation until 2014, when President Dilma Rousseff launched a “national truth commission” that sought to quantify the effects of the dictatorship’s rampant and unjust detainments.
But even through the torturous silence, Eunice never ceased in her diligence to find out where the regime had taken her husband. Even after she was detained, then tortured and imprisoned by the military police for twelve days, she never stopped. Throughout it all, she was still there, putting on a smiling face for her children but working as hard as humanly possible to find her husband.
When it had been two years since Rubens’ disappearance, Eunice would re-enroll at Mackenzie University in 1973 and complete her law degree. From the grief that came with her tragic loss, Eunice shifted her sadness into a force for good.
She would become a prominent human rights advocate, founding organizations like “O Instituto de Antropologia e Meio Ambiente,” or the Institute of Anthropology and the Environment. Her work in these groups would help bring to light the injustices the military committed during its dictatorship, especially against the indigenous population of Brazil.
While the dictatorship had robbed her of the love of her life, Eunice Paiva never lost hope. She almost did, several times. It was never easy. But even after the death of her husband, she honored him in life. Paiva would speak at institutions around the world about the importance of fighting against governmental injustice no matter what.
Eunice Paiva passed away from Alzheimer’s disease in December 2018, surrounded by her loving children. She was 89. She left behind a legacy that has empowered thousands of Brazilians to follow in her footsteps; remaining dutifully aware of the history their country has with democracy, and never letting the past repeat itself.
Iconic Brazilian Musician Chico Buarque, 24, at the March of One Hundred Thousand, 1968. © Folhapress
Música popular brasileira and the power of protest music
The Paivas were one of many families who were torn apart by the dictatorship’s random abductions. During the dictatorship’s reign, an estimated 20,000 people were abducted and tortured by them. 434 were killed.
This is thousands of people, and by consequence thousands of families, who were affected. Many, including Eunice’s son Marcelo Paiva, attest to a lingering psychological stress as a result of the abductions. They produced a toxic miasma of fear that hung over Brazil, coming down upon their daily lives with implacable persistence.
On top of the abductions, the artists of Brazil faced severe censorship. For their countercultural music and their part in establishing the popular “tropicalia” movement, two legendary Brazilian musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were detained and exiled in 1969, and were sent to London for two years.
Despite being torn from their homeland, they returned in 1972 to an especially boisterous era for Brazilian music. It seemed like you couldn’t escape the constant stream of new music. Anyone from Samba-prodigies like Jorge Ben to the charming tropicalians “Os Novos Baianos” were seeing consistent radio play. And the people of Brazil were loving all of it.
Despite the attempts of their government, Brazilians the nation over seemed committed to making music. And this wasn’t without reason. While Gil and Veloso were in London, artists, critics and audiences were confiding in each other their fears, concern and resentment for their government. In so doing, music became protest during this time.
One of the most significant figures of this period is Chico Buarque, who is a prolific artist in Brazil thanks to his legendarily influential art, political activism and mainstream popularity.
Buarque was no stranger to the music industry at this point. After quitting his studies in architecture at the University of São Paulo in 1965, he decided to pursue music, playwriting and authorship full-time. He was no amateur, either – he quickly rose through the ranks, and by the late 60s had four albums to his name.
Buarque’s rise to artistic stardom ties in with “música popular brasileira,” or “MPB,” a genre of music that combined western pop with traditional Brazilian Samba. Initially, it was quite popular, but as time went on and oppression mounted, MPB changed from being casual, household music into something far more confrontational.
Buarque was particularly enraged by the dictatorship by 1969. After Veloso and Gil (who were drinking buddies of Buarque’s) were exiled, and an anti-communist group called “Comando de Caça aos Comunistas,” or the “communist hunting command” attacked a screening of Buarque’s play “Roda Viva,” he packed his bags and began a self-imposed exile in Italy.
While there, Buarque began work on his fifth album, “Construção.” He wrote most of the material while in Rome, with his lyrics taking on a much more implicit tone of criticism. This was no instance of cowardice, though — Buarque was tactical with his indirectness. Instead of naming the dictatorship, his songs now did so through deeply creative poems and stories.
The title track of the album, “Construção,” is a great example of this. It is a fictional tale about a construction worker who falls to his death after coming to the job site in a drunken stupor. On face value, one might assume the song is critical of excessive drinking, that the man was a fool and got his just dues for such recklessness.
But the real meaning of the song suggests that the man was drunk because of the oppression he lived under, and how it compounded his existing sadnesses in an especially tragic way. The refraining lyric of “Deus lhe pague,” or “may God pay you back,” is a particularly spiteful stab at the dictatorship.
Through one story, Buarque was singing of the mistreatment the entire Brazilian population was facing. The protagonist of the song is an everyman, who resorts to excessive drinking after having been weighed down by the constant fear that he or his family could be next in line for abduction.
After returning from Italy, Buarque would record and release the album. To his luck, songs like “Cordão” and “Cotidiano” were indirect enough to be massive radio hits, escaping censorship. Philips Records, Buarque’s label, were so overwhelmed by the success of “Construção” that they had to hire two of their competing labels to use their pressing plants in order to keep up with demand.
In its first four weeks, “Construção” sold over 100,000 copies. The effect his music was having on the people was apparent. Even after he voluntarily exited the spotlight by moving to Italy, he was still met with success and unwavering support upon his return.
But this album was already building upon a few years’ worth of protest music. “Construção” is significant in that it is one of the most noteworthy examples of the subversive, metaphorical direction MPB’s lyrics began to take, and how that subversiveness allowed it to be massively popular.
As indirect as his lyrics were, the core of Buarque’s music was still coming from a love for Brazil. He had a bleeding heart for his country, and the oppression his people faced troubled him. Instead of sitting down and taking that oppression, he forwarded his frustration in a way that made him a living legend of Brazilian music and art.
Chico Buarque is still living to this day. He is not only a symbol of the country’s progressive and anti-authoritarian politics, but a reflection of the power music like his had in safeguarding the resilience of the Brazilian people, even as the dictatorship tried to steamroll it.
But he was one of many musicians contributing to the same movement. We can credit him as a primary frontrunner, but he certainly wasn’t the only one. Alongside him were people like Milton Nascimento, Lo Borges, Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Gal Costa, and the aforementioned Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
All of these artists, at some point or another, collaborated with each other in the criticism of their government through music. They were a loose collective of young, passionate people, and the metaphors they wrote into their music allowed them to rise to the forefront of Brazilian culture, all against seemingly impossible odds. The military might have had the guns, but the musicians had the ears of the people.
As the artists continued to take aim at their government through music, things slowly became better for Brazilians as the 1970s came to a close. Under the military-appointed presidency of João Figueiredo, the country began to re-democratize itself.
In 1979, he signed into law the granting of amnesty to those who were convicted of “political crimes” between the years of 1964 and 1978. This marked a distinct shift in the military’s power, even if it may have also done the same for abusive military officials. Yet, by lowering the punishments a Brazilian could face for criticizing their government, the floodgates began to open for organized protest.
By the 1980s, the Brazilian people were protesting so fervently under the “Diretas Já” movement that the military finally relinquished most of its power on March 15th, 1985. The dictatorship had stepped down from power and reinstated (somewhat) democratic elections.
The people had finally won – but they would not see truly free and fair elections until the presidency of José Sarney, who rolled out a new constitution that significantly expanded and protected civil liberties, leading to the current government Brazil has now.
Chico Buarque was right there with his fellow musicians commemorating the return of democracy, piling into the streets and celebrating with their fellow Brazilians like they weren’t lofty superstars, but part of one group of people. Now, Buarque and his colleagues could sing whenever and however they wanted, unfettered by the fear they once lived with.
The music of Brazil during this time reflected a society that was emotionally overrun, but confident in a brighter future. Buarque and his friends, despite being young people who faced a regime that could abduct and torture anyone who disagreed with them, never relented. And to this day, they still remain vocal advocates for progressivism in Brazil.
As modern-day Brazil continues to grapple with a severely contentious era of its politics, the artists of this period have never left. Even if they’ve passed on, like Eunice Paiva their legacies remain immortal. In that special, powerful way music has, their art lives and breathes in a way that still gives them a voice all these decades later.
And for those that are still with us, they have never stopped speaking, protesting and organizing. But perhaps most importantly, they are still singing. Never discount music’s power – it is so much more than meets the eye. Or is it the ear?
If you are interested, you may listen to a short playlist of essential MPB here!