#‘I’m Still Here’ Star Fernanda Torres on a True-Life Story of Resistance: “They Couldn’t Break Her”

“It’s a miracle,” says Fernanda Torres, the star of Walter Salles‘ I’m Still Here when congratulated on her Golden Globe nomination for the role.

In I’m Still Here, Torres plays Eunice Paiva, a mother of six and wife to former Brazilian congressman Rubens Paiva. When Rubens is “disappeared” by the Brazilian regime, during the country’s military dictatorship — which ran from 1964 to 1985 — Paiva reinvents herself as a human rights lawyer and activist, fighting for justice for herself and families like hers.

Adapted by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega from the autobiographical novel of the same name by Eunice and Rubens’ son Marcelo Rubens Paiva, I’m Still Here is a story of courage and resistance in the face of fascism. It is also the tale of Eunice Paiva’s transformation, from the “1950s housewife” she was raised to be, to returning to law school at 48 to become a fearless activist. She faced intimidation and imprisonment. The film’s most harrowing moments show Eunice’s interrogation by the military, when she is taken from her home, with no contact with the outside world, and spends 12 days in a dark, dank cell, hearing the screams of people being tortured coming through the walls.

But Eunice never lost her spirit. “She was always calm, very intelligent, and very persuasive, and she was always smiling,” says Torres. “She understood the smile as a weapon: To tell the dictatorship they couldn’t break her.”

Torres spoke with The Hollywood Reporter on her personal connection to the Paiva family, the message of Eunice’s story for today, and the family symmetry that sees her nominated for a Golden Globe 32 years after her own mother, Brazilian film legend Fernanda Montenegro (who has a cameo in I’m Still Here as the elderly Eunice) received a Golden Globe nom for Sales’ Central Station in 1993, the first time a Brazilian actress was nominated.

Walter Salles knew the Paiva family intimately. What was your connection to this story?

My personal connection is Marcelo Rubens Paiva. When he wrote his first book [Happy Old Year] It was a big hit in Brazil. I could have been the young girl in the movie [who asks author Marcelo for an autograph]. I was that age at that time, I lived in Rio. My family and my house were just like his house, with less parties. Marcelo, when he wrote the book, became this idol to all my generation. We were all crazy about Marcelo. We all knew he had lost his father during the dictatorship, but it was just a headline, we didn’t know any details. I first knew of Eunice Paiva as the mother of Marcelo.

When Marcelo wrote I’m Still Here, I ran to the bookstores to read it, because I always wanted to know about what really happened to his father. It was shocking, even more than in the film. What really struck me, though, is how he describes what was also my childhood. My brother, when he saw the movie, said: “My God, that’s our life!” As an adolescent, I was just like the girl in the car filming, having an adolescent life during the dictatorship, afraid of being arrested by policemen. I learned about censorship when I was five years old. I had friends whose parents were disappeared.

How did you get into Eunice’s mindset in order to portray her on screen?

The book had a lot of details about her and her background, the way she was raised to be this perfect housewife from the 50s, and how she became herself. It’s funny, because she became herself, in a way, of this tragedy. Rubens, this very progressive man, didn’t like the idea of his wife working, he wanted the perfect housewife.

Eunice also gave a lot of interviews, and that’s where I grabbed a lot from because she was always calm, very intelligent, and very persuasive, and she was always smiling. The smile was a key thing for the movie. The last thing Rubens did when he was arrested was to smile at her from the door. Later, she would tell her family to smile in the pictures from the press. She understood the smile as a weapon: To tell the dictatorship they couldn’t break her. In her interviews, in the way she speaks, she’s very feminine, she’s very polite, but she’s very tough. The very feminine smile was a key thing for me because I think she’s more feminine than I am.

A different generation, I guess. I assume you weren’t raised to be a 1950s housewife?

Yeah, no, no way.

What was the most challenging scene to play in the film?

The prison scene was very complex. During her interrogation, she discovers things her husband was doing that she didn’t know about. The interrogator uses this against her to make her angry with her husband. So much is going on — fear for her daughter, anger, betrayal, and a strong desire not to harm her husband.

Another pivotal scene is the moment she learns her husband is dead. We shot multiple takes of that scene, and in one I was sobbing, but the director chose the more restrained take, where she says, “Do you mind if I don’t take you to the door?”

There’s also the ice cream scene, where Eunice realizes her utopia of a perfect family is over. She buries her dream in that moment.

Eunice is such an interesting character because she stays in control, even while devastated. She keeps that constant smile.

I think that connects her to the audience. She doesn’t react openly or show her emotions, but viewers understand what she’s feeling. As a mother, she doesn’t break. She still has five children to raise.

Your own mother, of course, is also in the film, playing Eunice in her later years. Was that your idea?

She was cast before me! Initially, I wasn’t Walter’s first pick, as I’m older than Eunice was when her husband disappeared. But issues arose with the actress he chose, and he eventually cast me. Walter asked me about my personal connections to the family, and I realized how much my mother reminded me of Eunice. There’s a photo of her from when we lived in São Paulo. My father stayed behind as we moved to Rio, and in that picture, you can see her fear and worry. Eunice reminded me of her — she’s a similar kind of woman.

And now you’ve been nominated for a Golden Globe, reminiscent of your mother’s Golden Globe nomination for Central Station back in 1999.

It’s such a beautiful tale, isn’t it? In a way, this film is a family reunion. It’s a family movie, not only in the subject but also behind the scenes. It’s so beautiful that the movie is being recognized in this way, with very good reviews, and with a Golden Globe nomination like the one that happened to my mother many years ago. It’s a beautiful tale.

Did she give you any advice about how to handle the whole US awards circuit since she went through it so many years ago?

No, she didn’t have to give me any advice because I remember her during that period. I remember my mother being kidnapped by the whole thing. So I knew it was going to be tough, tough work. Back then it was mainly in the United States, but nowadays, the voters of Golden Globes are spread all over the world. Since September it’s been unbelievable the amount of airplane trips that I have been taking.

This is a story from Brazil’s past, but what message do you see for the current day, for the current moment, in Eunice and her story?

This film was released in Brazil at a moment when we discovered that [former Brazilian president Jair] Bolsonaro had a plan for a coup d’etat here after the election after Lula [da Silva] was elected. Bolsonaro didn’t want to accept the loss, like what happened in the U.S. And he was surrounded by military people who wanted to do the coup. It’s been discovered they had plans to kill Lula, to kill the vice president, to kill the Supreme Court. A real coup d’etat. Some of the military that were involved in this coup plan were the very same right-wing people who were torturers during the 70s.

Do you see this film in some ways, a fight for the past? I know that Bolsonaro infamously praised the dictatorship.

When he voted for [former Brazilian President] Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, he dedicated his vote to Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, a well-known torturer. It’s funny, because we thought the film would speak to the progressive part of the society, but it’s become a big mainstream hit in Brazil [earning more than $11 million]. I think it’s because it depicts, not the political fight, but what happens to the family under a dictatorial government, what happens with human rights, with civil rights. It talks about a normal mother, a mother of five. It reaches everyone.

Adolescents and young people, who never lived in a dictatorial government, are discovering the history. They are starting to think: I wouldn’t want to live in a country like that. They are learning what dictatorship means through the movie. Recently, there’s been this movement to say the dictatorship was not so bad because the economy was working, and that maybe democracy is the problem because it’s so confusing. Perhaps if you have a liberal economy with a powerful government, it would solve our problems. Young people are rethinking this, saying: No, I wouldn’t like to live in a place where this could happen to my father, to my mother, to me.

What do you think Eunice would have to say to people in the United States who are facing maybe not a dictatorship, but four years of authoritarian uncertainty under Donald Trump?

The dictatorship in Brazil was part of a Cold War moment in the world, a very sick moment where the United States was intervening in countries and sponsoring dictatorships because they wanted to fight communism. Nowadays, we are facing another sick moment. All over the world,, you have governments tending towards dictatorship, it’s like a new order. The technology revolution, which we thought would solve our problems has only created more inequality. It’s not only in the States. I think Eunice would tell all of us to endure. The film in a way tells us that we must endure, we must face the challenges with civility, and we must fight for human rights. We must fight for the basic values we fought for after the Second World War. For human rights. This all is happening in part because democracy failed to solve many of our problems, but democracy is still the best way to go, and we must fight for democracy and we must fight for human rights, I think that’s what Eunice would say.