OSCARS WATCH 2025 – I’m Still Here: A Harrowing Retelling and Warning

This post is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 97th Academy Awards.

After government operatives enter and occupy the Paiva home in the film I’m Still Here, their daughter innocently runs into the home to retrieve a ball. She is unaware of what is happening and insists on being allowed back outside to play with her friends. At this moment, unbeknownst to the daughter but acutely sensed by the mother, their mundane life has been stolen. The family’s patriarch, Rubens (Selton Mello), a former Brazilian left-wing politician, has been detained without explanation. The Paiva family can never experience their blissful mundanity again, or rather their mundanity will always be framed by “eternal psychological torture,” as Paiva matriarch Eunice (Fernanda Torres) describes it. In many ways, I’m Still Here is about the limitations on the insistence of mundanity in times of turmoil and what we lose as a society when gradual escalations are unaddressed.

In 1964, the United States supported a military coup in Brazil that heralded a nearly twenty-year military dictatorship (1). Under military rule, a series of Institutional Acts were enacted including Institutional Act Number 5 (“AI-5”), which authorized the Brazilian president to suspend Brazil’s legislative bodies, remove the political rights of any Brazilian deemed to engage in “unlawful” activity, and invalidate habeas corpus requests (2). As a response to the censorship and imprisonment of political dissidents, radical resistance groups kidnapped foreign ambassadors to negotiate the release of political prisoners (3).

These circumstances frame I’m Still Here, which is based on the true story of the Paiva family and their headstrong matriarch, Eunice, as they navigate a tragedy orchestrated by the regime of Brazilian authoritarian president, Emilío Médici. I’m Still Here is an adaptation of the autobiography written by the only son in the Paiva family, Marcelo Paiva.

The film sets up the political dynamic in Brazil while presenting a family fully engaged in the everyday joys and struggles of a mundane affluent life. An early scene in the film follows the eldest daughter, Veroca (Valentina Herszage) spending time with her friends but being harassed at a military checkpoint for the cohort’s hippy aesthetic. Despite the turmoil, the family eats dinner and makes plans for the future, including considering sending Veroca to England to prevent her from participating in violently suppressed university protests. The strength of the film lies less in the plot than in the acting and cinematography that subtly points to the internal battles waging in the minds of the characters.

The reality of most people living under oppressive political regimes is balancing a keen observation of the regime’s moves and the maintenance of routine for sanity and survival. Most people are focused on daily routines until they can no longer avoid tyranny. We consume news, particularly international news, through tragedies without considering that most people in these localities still have to go to work, eat, take care of their families, and chase their dreams. And it’s the moments between the insistence on routine and indiscriminate violence that determine whether we tilt towards chaos or order.

Humans, Americans especially, believe in the inevitability of order, even with all evidence of the opposite. However, society follows the second rule of thermodynamics, and it takes a lot of effort and intentionality to make the entropy inherent to any complex society feel uneventful.

In fact, two other 2025 Oscar nominated films touch on one of the most recent moments in American history when political tyranny led to chaos that took the lives and livelihoods of American citizens. A Complete Unknown opens with acclaimed folk singer Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) addressing the media after being convicted for contempt of Congress after he refused to testify during a House Un-American Activities Committee's investigation (4). The fictional depiction represents a real series of events that transformed Seeger from a member of the popular Weavers quartet group to a solo artist struggling to book summer camps and union halls (5). Although Seeger never served any time in jail, he was blacklisted from American network television and was rejected from most colleges and concert halls for his perceived radical beliefs, which included support for the Civil Rights Movement (6).

Although the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had been founded in 1938 to investigate the activities of Americans suspected of having ties to the Communist Party, the committee didn’t kick into high gear until 1950 when zealous Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy heightened the stakes by ruthlessly pursuing prosecution under the unfounded allegation that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies (7).

McCarthy employed the cunning genius of young lawyer Roy Cohn to lead investigations, which were intended to embarrass and snuff out anyone with any remote sympathies to the Communist ideology. (8) Easily the most controversial McCarthy incident is the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case, which led to the conviction and execution of the married couple. While it is established that Julius did conspire to spy on behalf of the Soviets, heavy skepticism remains about Ethel’s involvement. In 2015, the grand jury testimony of key witness David Greenglass (Ethel’s brother) was unsealed and revealed that testimony of Ethel typing atomic secrets was omitted, heavily implying that Greenglass committed perjury that led to the execution of his sister. (9) It is further suggested that the alleged false testimony was induced by the prosecution, which was eager to make an example of the Rosenbergs. And anyone familiar with Roy Cohn wouldn’t be surprised at the surmise that he himself was involved in the illegal intimidation of Greenglass.

The Apprentice, follows a young Donald Trump (Stan Sebastian) transforming under the tutelage of Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) from an ambitious but insecure son of a Queens slumlord to the ruthless and charismatic individual we know today. Our introduction to Roy Cohn involves him brashly bragging about sending the Rosenbergs to the “chair.” Throughout the film, Cohn justifies participation in the McCarthy prosecutions as his desire to “safeguard America.” Both Sebastian and Strong are nominated for their acting in the film and rightly so. While it’s easy to depict such outsized real people as caricatures, Sebastian and Strong manage to find the logic and humanity that motivate people like Trump and Cohn. The reality is that their dependency on power for validation leaves no room for empathy and non-transactional kindness. And they will stop at nothing to acquire what they believe is their appropriate place in society.

As I left the theatre screening for I’m Still Here, a fear rose in me. Does a Rubens Paiva even exist in our society today? Under no circumstances should anyone have to sacrifice their life to criticize or work against a tyrannical regime, but if it came down to it, is the spirit of resistance still alive? Are we ready to prevent the tragedy that befell the Paivas and the hundreds of families affected by disappeared Brazilians? (10)

People in countries around the world are currently living at a critical juncture between an insistence on mundanity and proper resistance to escalating behaviors. We shouldn’t be flippant about news that a President’s administration is requesting loyalty tests for government employees, insisting on the deportation of foreign students who dare to exercise their freedom of speech, and physically removing a long-time bureaucrat for refusing to enforce illegal agency terminations. (11) It’s easy to imagine how this rapid escalation can lead to a world where the simplest critique is interpreted as treason. If we’re unwilling to heed the warning of I’m Still Here, we may very well lose the mundane routines we cling to for our sanity.

Notes

(1) See The Library of Congress, The United States and Brazil’s Military Coup, https://guides.loc.gov/brazil-us-relations/brazil-coup-1964and The Library of Congress, The Military Dictatorship (1964-1985), https://guides.loc.gov/brazil-us-relations/military-dictatorship for more information

(2) Tâmara Freire, AgênciaBrasil, Military Regime: Notoriously repressive AI-5 decree turns 55, https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en/direitos-humanos/noticia/2023-12/military-regime-notoriously-repressive-ai-5-decree-turns-55.

(3) The Library of Congress, The Kidnapping of Ambassador Charles Burke (1969), https://guides.loc.gov/brazil-us-relations/ambassador-charles-burke-elbrick-kidnapping.

(4) Paul S. Cowan, The Harvard Crimson, Court Sentences Seeger for Year on Contempt of Congress Charges (April 10, 1961), https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1961/4/10/court-sentences-seeger-for-year-on/.

(5) Peter Dreier, The American Prospect, Recalling Pete Seeger’s Controversial Performance on the Smothers Brothers Show 50 Years Ago(Feb. 28, 2018), https://prospect.org/culture/recalling-pete-seeger-s-controversial-performance-smothers-brothers-show-50-years-ago/.

(6) See note 5

(7) Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, McCarthyism/ The “Red Scare”,https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/mccarthyism-red-scare#:~:text=Senator%20Joseph%20R.,the%20U.S.%20Department%20of%20State..

(8) Jordana Rosenfeld, Britannica, Roy Cohn (Jan. 23, 2025), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roy-Cohn.

(9) Sam Roberts, The NYTimes, Secret Grand Jury Testimony from Ethel Rosenberg’s Brother is Released (July 15, 2015), https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/16/nyregion/david-greenglass-grand-jury-testimony-ethel-rosenberg.html.

(10) Pablo Uchoa, BBC News, Remembering Brazil’s decades of military military repression (March 31, 2014), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-26713772.

(11) See Matthew Lee, Aamer Madhani, and Jill Colvin, AP News, Loyalty tests and MAGA checks: Inside the Trump White House’s intense screening of job-seekers (Jan. 25, 2025), https://apnews.com/article/trump-loyalty-white-house-maga-vetting-jobs-768fa5cbcf175652655c86203222f47c, Andrea Shalal, Reuters, Trump administration to cancel student visas of pro-Palestinian protestors (Jan. 29, 2025), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-cancel-student-visas-all-hamas-sympathizers-white-house-2025-01-29/, and Rachael Levy, Reuters, Exclusive: USDA inspector general escorted out of her office after defying White House(Jan. 29, 2025), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/usda-inspector-general-escorted-out-her-office-after-defying-white-house-2025-01-29/for more information.

Biography

Martina Fouquet is a lawyer living in New York City. She enjoys writing about media and its relationship to society, politics, and unconsidered creative precedent.