I saw I’m Still Here in its opening days, entering the theater excited. I was looking forward to watching a film made by an award-winning director, featuring renowned Brazilian actors, and telling a story that truly deserves to be on the big screen. That’s the story of the Paiva family, whose patriarch Rubens Paiva—played by Selton Mello—was abducted and later murdered by the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1971. His body was never found.
I’m Still Here features outstanding performances; its pace is perfectly smooth. But the movie also goes beyond technical excellence. It deeply moved me. I left the theater with red eyes. When my friends asked me why I was crying, I could only manage a weak “I don’t know; it’s very sad.”
At the center of the tragedy is Eunice Paiva, Rubens’s wife and the mother of their five children, who’s portrayed by Fernanda Torres. (Torres won Best Female Actor at this year’s Golden Globes and is a strong contender for the Oscar for best actress.) The film powerfully displays her grief as she faces her beloved husband’s disappearance and, later, his confirmed death.
That grief is made more poignant by this story’s devastating before and after. The film’s opening scenes picture the perfect Brazilian life: an upper middle-class family living by the beach in Rio de Janeiro. Children cross the street to play with their friends; parties overflow with dancing. The Paiva family’s lives, for a time, are untouched by the chaos of the military dictatorship that ran Brazil between 1964 and 1985.
But on an ordinary day, Rubens is taken by armed men who politely knock on his door, insisting that he answer a few questions. He never returns. “Where’s Dad?” and “When will Dad be back?” ask the children. Eunice never answers them directly. Eventually, the questions stop. Everyone, with or without answers, becomes aware that paradise has been lost.
I’m Still Here doesn’t have a resolution. Rubens doesn’t come home. The movie made me cry because it reminded me of the still deplorable state of the world we still live in. That’s cause for abject despair.
Or is it?
In an interview with the Brazilian media outlet UOL Prime, Fernanda Torres says that “Eunice is the understanding of something tragic that does not allow self-pity.” Her words remind me of this passage from Jeremiah:
Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. (Jer. 29:5–7)
When Jeremiah began to preach to the people of God, Judah was a prosperous, protected city. Everything changed when Nebuchadnezzar II began to impose his power. Suddenly, free people found themselves prisoners of a corrupt nation.
But there was no time for self-pity. The Israelites, Jeremiah insisted, were not to see themselves as victims, to accept that the entire history of their people would be defined by a tragedy. God’s plans are dynamic; he was acting, even in the midst of exile, and they were instructed to do the same. Build, plant, marry, increase.
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I’m Still Here exemplifies this kind of resilience. “You don’t have to smile,” says the newspaper photographer taking the family’s portrait for an article about Rubens Paiva’s disappearance. Eunice immediately replies, “Why not?” The photographer’s request seems obvious: How can a family that has just lost their father smile for a photo? “The editor asks for a ‘less happy’ photo,” he explains. Eunice is indignant. “We will smile. Smile!”
For Eunice, and for the people of God in Babylon, walking on in spite of evil is the winning option. Refusing to give in to bitterness and anger constitutes true resistance.
When God sent Israel into exile in Babylon and told them to get on with their lives, he made it clear that exile wasn’t forever.
This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. … I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:10–11, 14)
By the time I’m Still Here ends, the Paiva family has moved to another city. Eunice has become a lawyer fighting for the rights of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, as well as for the investigation and punishment of those responsible for her husband’s murder. Her children have studied and built families of their own. The film’s finale shows an older Eunice still with the memory of pain—and still with faith. She looks on as her children, sons- and daughter-in-law, and grandchildren sit around the table sharing food and laughing.
The story of Israel did not end in Babylonian exile. The story of Eunice and the Paiva family did not end with the tragic death of a father. Our story does not end here. We are still in a fallen, sad, and sick world. Soon, we will no longer be.
Mariana Albuquerque is the global project manager at Christianity Today.
