First film of the Palm Springs Film Festival— I’m Still Here.
Fernanda Torres received Best Actress Award at Golden Globes this week and her director Walter Salles both from Brazil were on stage after the screening to discuss.
This an ambitious film dealing with Brazil’s dictatorship arresting and murdering Torres husband. Film set in 1971 Rio de Janeiro.
The film is a warning to democracy’s the world over turning to strongmen.
I am working on a comedy and incorporating a Bossa Nova band into the plot. My story is more to do with climate than political mayhem.
Fernanda Torres is astonishing.
Walter Salles has spent 7 years getting this film made. Work included both biographical and historical elements. Salles described the process of development as a journey of decanting the contents of history into this story. Because of the deeply personal level of the film, Salles had grown up in Rio and was friends with one of the children in the family that lost their father to the brutal dictatorial regime of the era.
Obvious linkages exist between then and now as the new Trump regime storms Washington with its thuggish behavior.
Brazil’s right wing has tried to halt this film from being screened yet has failed. The film has been a huge hit there, as the beaming defiant Salles explained last night.
This is not entertainment, this is an ambitious film, as serious a film as can be made. We see the unfolding horror through the eyes of one small defenseless family, through its children and the mother who has lost the love of her life. The husband was guilty of nothing but suspicion.
Off to see a rom-com next—
