HOLLYWOOD—If you have ever been to Brazil, you know how amazing it is. They are known for their beautiful women, parties, drinking and most of all having fun. So, imagine the celebration when the Oscar nominations were announced, the surprising strength of Walter Salles in “I’m Still Here,” with nods for Fernanda Torres as Best Actress, Best International Film and most unexpected of all, Best Picture. It caused so many celebrations in Brazil. The film is emotionally powerful and eloquent, it tells the real-life story of a family living under Brazil’s two-decade military dictatorship, which ended in 1985.
In 1971, Ruebens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former congressman, was taken by military police and never seen again, leaving his wife, Eunice (Torres), to create a future for herself and her five children. In the years to come, Eunice returns to school and becomes a prominent human rights lawyer, she never stops trying to find the truth about her husband’s fate and to hold the state accountable.
On the day that the nominations were announced, January 23, film and reality intersected again. Paiva’s death certificate, which had declared him missing, was amended to reflect that his death was violently caused by the Brazilian state. While she’s a front runner (Torres) to win, you still have Demi Moore as the best actress frontrunner to compete against. It’s been quite a journey for Torres, who has an enormous social media following. Salles’s films include Central Station (1998) which was also nominated for the international film Oscar and, with what turns out to be poignant, in the best actress category for Torres’s mother, Fernanda Montenegro, who plays the older Eunice in “I’m Still Here.”
The film was seven years in the making. Salles’s was inspired to make the film after reading the 2015 memoir by Ruben’s and Eunice’s son, Marcelo Paiva, who began writing it when his mother, who had fought to preserve the family’s memory for decades, was falling into the horrible disease of Alzheimer’s, and therefore losing her memory. Fernanda became the first Brazilian, Latin American, and Portuguese-speaking actress to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture-Drama and received a nod for Best actress for the Academy Award. The 59-year-old star is currently the pride of Brazil, whether she wins or loses, she was nominated.
Torres is no stranger to awards; she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Love Me Forever or Never in 1986. Her Mother was the first Brazilian to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She actually began her film debut at the age of 17, in 1983, with the film ‘Innocencia,” based on the work of Viscount of Taunay and directed by Walter Lima Jr. Her next movie, “A Marvada Carne,” in 1985, won her the award for Best Actress at the Gramado Festival. While the film “For Love Me Forever or Never,” by Arnaldo Jabor, Torres won the Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival and at the Cuba Film Festival. She is married to movie producer and director Andrucha Waddington. The couple has two sons.
Rose’s Scoop: With a $1.5 million production budget and a $26.3 million box office receipt, the film became the highest-grossing Brazilian film since the COVID-19 pandemic. The nominees for Best actress in the 2025 Academy Awards are Cynthia Erivo, for Wicked, Mikey Madison for Anora, Demi Moore for the Substance, Karla Sofia Gascon for Emilia Perez and Fernanda Torres for I’m Still Here. We all wish her the very best and let’s see if a Brazilian wins the Oscar in 2025!
