I’m Nonetheless Right here, entitled Ainda Estou Aqui within the Portuguese language, is a masterful political thriller disguised as a household drama, which ends in uplifting vogue for its protagonist Eunice Paiva. From residing a seemingly idyllic life along with her husband Rubens and youngsters in a rich beachfront neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Eunice’s world is thrown into turmoil when Rubens is taken away by a bunch of mysterious males from the Brazilian military. She’s advised that he’s going to present a “deposition”, and that he’ll be again at dwelling inside a number of hours.
As an alternative, she’s already mentioned goodbye to Rubens for the final time. The Paiva kids won’t ever see their father once more. They’re left within the nightmarish limbo of not realizing what’s occurred to him, however not with the ability to discuss it underneath the repressive situations of Brazil’s army dictatorship, a state of affairs which additionally impressed Terry Gilliam’s satirical sci-fi film Brazil. Eunice Paiva is burdened with managing her new actuality as a single mom to 5 kids and not using a steady earnings, whereas coming to phrases with the disappearance of her husband and her interrogation by the hands of his omnipotent captors.
What Occurs to Rubens Paiva In I am Nonetheless Right here
He’s Made To Disappear By Brazil’s Army Dictatorship
Though the true story of Rubens Paiva’s disappearance is on the middle of I’m Nonetheless Right here’s plot, what occurs to him is rarely really offered onscreen within the film. That’s most likely for the most effective, as we get hints of his horrifying ordeal in the course of the scenes by which Eunice and her daughter Eliana are taken to a army base for interrogation. We hear the screams of different prisoners being tortured, whereas Eunice sees blood stains on the ground of her interrogation room.
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In the meantime, information tales proliferate in Brazil that Rubens Paiva has escaped and is now not within the palms of the state. When Eunice is being interrogated, she’s advised that her husband is “upstairs” from the room she’s in. Her daughter’s trainer, who was helping political exiles alongside Rubens, claimed to have heard him saying his identify in her neighborhood throughout her personal imprisonment by the military. Not one of the tales appear to match up, and it’s clear that Brazil’s army regime is hiding one thing.
Within the months after her launch, a political activist and pal of her husband involves Eunice’s home to inform her what’s actually occurred to her husband. He’s been killed in military custody, in line with reviews coming from throughout the state. The president of Brazil himself, Emílio Médici, who’s additionally head of the army junta, apparently confirmed Rubens Paiva’s dying to insiders. When Eunice asks, “And the physique?”, her husband’s pal is unable to present her a transparent reply. What’s clear is that Paiva’s physique has been disposed of in a means that may’t incriminate anybody within the regime.
Was Rubens Paiva’s Physique Ever Discovered?
It Was Hidden As Proof That Would Incriminate The Regime
As I’m Nonetheless Right here explains in its postscript, Rubens Paiva’s physique has by no means been recovered. There have been makes an attempt to seek out his stays in a shallow grave in 1987, nevertheless it turned out that the Brazilian army had already exhumed them and thrown them into the ocean off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, 14 years earlier (through O Globo).
The dictatorship is thought to have killed greater than 400 individuals for political causes, with an enormous proportion of those deaths occurring throughout Médici’s five-year rule, which is when Paiva disappeared. Many of those victims ended up in mass, unmarked graves, or have been disposed of at sea, as Rubens Paiva seems to have been.
How & Why Eunice Paiva Obtains Her Husband’s Demise Certificates
She’s Instrumental In Passing A Regulation That Gives Closure For Her Household
With out their our bodies ever being discovered, Brazil’s victims of pressured disappearances in the course of the dictatorship have been nonetheless legally thought of alive for many years after they’d final been seen. Rubens Paiva, for instance, was supposedly a lacking individual regardless that his case file was closed inside a number of months of him going lacking. Eunice Paiva and her household weren’t even capable of grieve correctly, as their husband and father wasn’t formally lifeless. What’s extra, the household was left and not using a steady supply of earnings, as they didn’t have entry to Rubens’ financial institution accounts with out proof that he was now not alive.
For these causes, as we see in I’m Nonetheless Right here, Eunice Paiva fought for many years to acquire her husband’s dying certificates. She even certified as a lawyer to strengthen her trigger, and performed a serious position in a regulation being enacted which acknowledges the deaths of her husband and different political dissidents in the course of the dictatorship.
The doc is tough proof that the state killed Rubens Paiva, formally placing an finish to any questions round his dying and who brought about it.
The second by which Eunice receives Rubens’ dying certificates in I’m Nonetheless Right here, on account of the regulation that she’d helped to go, is an uplifting, if painful, conclusion to her a long time of struggling. The doc is tough proof that the state killed Rubens Paiva, formally placing an finish to any questions round his dying and who brought about it. It’s additionally recognition of the horrible improper completed to Eunice and her household, who suffered 25 years of “psychological torment”, as she describes it, for the sake of a regime trying to cowl up its crimes.
What Situation Eunice Paiva Has At The Finish Of The Film
She’s Unable To Communicate And Doesn’t Appear Conscious Of Her Environment
The portrayal of Eunice Paiva, performed by Oscars darkish horse Fernanda Torres, lastly receiving her husband’s dying certificates in 1996 may have been a triumphant – if bittersweet – second for I’m Nonetheless Right here to finish on. As an alternative, the film continues with an extra epilogue, by which we see Eunice on the age of 85, unable to talk, or transfer round with out help.
“I’m Nonetheless Right here skips forward in time twice. The primary time is a welcome shift and underscores simply how lengthy Eunice was preventing for justice on behalf of her husband.” – Mae Abdulbaki – ScreenRant’s overview of I am Nonetheless Right here
Anybody with a member of the family who’s skilled some type of dementia will acknowledge Eunice’s signs. It’s clarified within the movie’s postscript that she lived with Alzheimer’s illness from 2003 till her dying. There’s the trace within the 1996 phase of I’m Nonetheless Right here that Eunice was already starting to lose her reminiscence at the moment, as she struggles to rely some banknotes. Nevertheless, there’s no proof to assist the concept she developed Alzheimer’s as early because the mid Nineties.
How A lot Of I am Nonetheless Right here Is Really True
The Film Is Largely Devoted To The True Story It’s Based mostly On
Other than this minor element, and a fictionalized scene by which Eunice is advised unofficially about her husband’s dying in 1971, the overwhelming majority of I’m Nonetheless Right here is fully true. The film is predicated on the 2015 memoirs of Marcelo Paiva, the son of Eunice and Rubens who options as one among its characters, which can be entitled Ainda Estou Aqui. The movie stays devoted to its supply materials all through, with minor dramatic elaborations largely making no distinction to the general story.
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However, the film model of I’m Nonetheless Right here does shift its focus from Marcelo Paiva’s perspective. It locations Eunice Paiva, the individual on the coronary heart of his memoir, front-and-center because the protagonist of your entire story. The ending of the movie isn’t about Rubens Paiva, who was his household’s first sufferer of Brazil’s army dictatorship. It’s about his spouse, Eunice, who was nonetheless there, left to attempt to keep it up with elevating a household regardless of what had occurred to her husband, reliving his victimhood as her personal for the rest of her life.
Supply: O Globo
I am Nonetheless Right here
7/10
- Launch Date
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November 20, 2024
- Runtime
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137 Minutes
- Director
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Walter Salles
- Writers
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Walter Salles, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Murilo Hauser, Heitor Lorega
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Fernanda Torres
Eunice Paiva
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Selton Mello
Rubens Paiva
