Oscars 2025: ‘I’m Still Here’ makes history for Brazil with triumphant win
I’m Still Here has won ‘Best International Feature’ at the 97th Academy Awards, becoming the first Brazilian film in history to win an Oscar.
Walter Salles’s film follows the true story of Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), a woman in Rio de Janeiro who becomes a political activist and national hero when her husband, political dissident Rubens Paiva, is forcibly disappeared by the military dictatorship in the 1970s.
The film was considered to be slightly less likely to win than Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez, but after a series of controversies, that film seems to have fallen out of favour with Oscar voters just as I’m Still Here has reached a wider audience.
In his acceptance speech, Salles said, “I’m so honoured to receive this and in such an extraordinary group of filmmakers.”
He continued: “This goes to a woman who, after a loss suffered during an authoritarian regime, decided not to bend. And to resist. So, this prize goes to her. And it goes to the two extraordinary women who gave life to her, Fernanda Torres and Fernanda Montenegro.”
Torres and Montenegro are historic figures themselves. They are mother and daughter, and Montenegro was the first Brazilian to be nominated for an acting category.
Torres is nominated in the same category this evening, and I’m Still Here is nominated for ‘Best Picture’.
Included in Far Out’s 50 best movies of 2024, I’m Still Here was one of the highlights of the year: “Internationally recognised Brazilian movies tend to focus on the country’s vast income inequality, but Walter Salles’ docudrama takes a different approach, zeroing in on a family whose blissful existence is torn apart by the country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s.”
Adding, “This is Salles’ first film in over a decade, and it’s personal. As a child, he was friends with one of the Paiva children and was a frequent visitor to their lively home. He brings a specificity to the character of Eunice, showing a woman whose dignity and resilience became a symbol of how easily a carefree life could be upended and redirected by a senseless act of political tyranny.”
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