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The award-winning Brazilian film has been a major hit in its home country — and it’s easy to see why.
By Alissa Wilkinson
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It may be axiomatic, but it is still profound: our sense of self becomes our minds through the accumulation of our memories. This is why science fiction is obsessed with the concept of technologies that can remove or modify reminiscence, and thus the headline of reminiscence. This is also why it’s so devastating to see an enjoyee wasting their memories, adjusting another user in the process.
This is also true at the broader level; Societies, after all, are only teams from other people who percentage. The filmmakers around the world, but especially the countries of South America, seem to be listening to this in recent times. They recommend that it can remodel the character of an organization of other people through the game with collective memory, and that is why governments need to brush the past. In recent years, acclaimed films such as “Azor”, “Eternal Memory” and “Argentina, 1985” have explored that non -public has an effect on mass disappearances under the dictatorships of the army in Chile and Argentina. In more general terms, they show how attempts to deny or forget about these disappearances have lasting effects in which they have survived.
The handsome, “Je suis Toujours Là”, joins them with their own history, is in Brazil. Directed through Walter Salles, one of the most notable filmmakers in the country, “I’M Still Here” is based on Marcelo’s memories of Marcelo Rubens Paiva, whose father, congressman Rubens Paiva, was among another 20,000 people which were tortured by the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.
Skillfully crafted and richly shot, “I’m Still Here” begins in Rio de Janeiro in 1970 when, despite the encroachment of the military on daily life, the sizable, loving Paiva family is largely living in domestic bliss. Rubens (Selton Mello) has recently returned home from six years of self-imposed exile, following his ouster from government during the revolution. He and his wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), have five children, four daughters and a son, ranging in age from grade school to older teens. They live near the beach, entertain friends, dance in the living room and have a happy, bustling home. Rubens is still working to support political expatriates, but he keeps his activities out of his family’s sight.
One day, though, the couple’s daughter Vera (Valentina Herszage) is stopped and searched by the authorities while driving home from a movie with friends. Soon after, news of left-wing activists kidnapping the Swiss ambassador breaks, kicking off a period of instability that rapidly escalates. When men show up at the Paiva home, demanding Rubens come with them to some unknown place for questioning, Eunice and the children know something is happening. Rubens doesn’t return. And then Eunice and her daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are brought in for questioning, too.
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