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Jubilant Brazilians hail I’m Still Here’s Oscar as landmark in fight for justice

Walter Salles’s dictatorship-era movie turns focus on dark time in country’s history and more recent coup attempt

The drama directed by Walter Salles – which tells the true story of Eunice Paiva, whose husband Rubens was forcibly disappeared during Brazil’s dictatorship – did not win the other two awards it was nominated for: best actress and best picture. But families of the regime’s victims argue that the film – seen by more than 5 million people in Brazil – has given the country something perhaps even more significant than more Oscars, as they hope it drives a fundamental shift in how Brazilians confront one of the most brutal periods in their history. The following year, the Brazilian state finally acknowledged her husband’s death – a scene portrayed in the movie, which shows Eunice telling reporters that it is essential to investigate and prosecute all crimes committed during the dictatorship because, ‘if that does not happen, nothing will stop them from being carried out again with impunity”.

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