Pedro Abramovay in The Ideas Letter:
In 2025, the Rio de Janeiro Carnival parade was, for the first time, interrupted by an announcement: I Am Still Here, a film that portrays the brutality of Brazil’s military dictatorship, had won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. It was the first time Brazil had won. The atmosphere in the Sambódromo, a special stadium built by architect Oscar Niemeyer for the annual Carnival parade, was as euphoric as a World Cup victory.
The film is not an easy one. Directed by Walter Salles Jr, it depicts the tragic story of the forced disappearance of former congressman Rubens Paiva and the search—led by his wife, Eunice—for the truth about what happened to her husband, a former Congressman who was imprisoned, tortured, and killed by the military forces at the behest of Brazil’s dictatorship. In a country as polarized as Brazil, it was far from obvious that the Oscar victory of such a political film would be celebrated almost unanimously.
Brazil remains deeply divided in its interpretation of the dictatorship. Half the country voted to reelect former president Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, who not only continues to defend the military regime as the best period in Brazil’s history, but attempted to actually replicate the coup d’état that inaugurated the dictatorship in 1964 when his opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won. He is currently imprisoned.
Bolsonaro’s hatred for I Am Still Here runs deep. He has always despised Rubens Paiva: In 2014, when the country erected a statue honoring Paiva, Bolsonaro spat on it. So the fact that the film provoked an explosion of joy in the Sambódromo, interrupting the Carnival parade, is no small matter.
More here.
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