Tucson’s Brazilian community is eagerly awaiting Friday’s local release of  “I’m Still Here / Ainda Estou Aqui,” which made history with its recent Academy Award nomination for Best Motion Picture.

The film is  the first Portuguese-language film and only the second Latin American film to be nominated in the category, following Alfonso Cuarón's “Roma” in 2019.

The film will premiere at The Loft Cinema Friday as part of its U.S.-wide release, after being screened at 24 International film festivals last year.

In addition to its best picture nomination,“I’m Still Here” also received nominations in the Best Actress and Best International Feature categories.

The film follows the Paiva family’s struggles during a military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1970s, after a member of the family goes missing. The film is adapted from the 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the son of Rubens Paiva, who disappeared and was presumably killed in 1971 during the dictatorship.

“People had to walk as quietly as possible, they couldn’t have any opposition to the government in Brazil,” Erick Tavares Marcelino Alves, a Brazilian graduate student at the University of Arizona, told Tucson Spotlight in Portuguese. “But this is only a small demonstration of what really happened during the military dictatorship, because there were 400 people who disappeared or were killed.”

Many of these disappearances were just uncovered as recently as the 21st century. President Dilma Roussef created the National Commission of Truth to investigate the wrongdoings during the military dictatorship that ran from 1964 through 1985.

“Until around the 2000s, Brazil was the only Latin American country that had not tried (anyone) for the crimes during the dictatorship,” Alves said. “So this film, above all, shows us to see the dictatorship as it was.”

Christiane Andrade, a Brazilian PhD student at the UA, said the time was also marked by strong censorship.

“They were forced to leave the country and then were forced to become refugees, seeking asylum in other countries,” Andrade said in Portuguese. “he dictatorship “is like dominoes, one piece falls and it reaches other pieces.”

Andrade, who is also president of the UA’s Portuguese Literature Club, talked about the importance of Paiva’s books. 

“It is certainly a part of our history, of our politics, that everyone should know about. It’s really important to really understand the context that we live in right now. What did we come from? Where did we come from? What did we go through?” Andrade said. “We had many people who… received this oppression in a very strong way.”  

The nonprofit Loft Cinema is premiering the film a week before it opens in other theaters, including AMC and Cinemark.

Since Alves didn’t have the opportunity to return to Brazil during winter break when the film screened there in November, he’s hoping to see it here on opening night.

He’s excited to see Best Actress nominee Fernanda Torres in the film, but above all, he wants to understand the bigger picture of what the movie represents. 

“We can’t let history repeat itself,” he said “It’s the first Brazilian film that will really treat the dictatorship as a central theme.”

The enduring trauma of the 20-year dictatorship has affected other generations down the line.

“They didn’t just suffer psychologically, but physically,” Alves said. “And that shaped a generation of people who, unfortunately, also became a little more conservative.” 

Andrade said that while her parents lived through the dictatorship, it wasn’t something that was discussed in her home growing up.

“We never were used to having these types of political conversations… maybe because they didn’t want to have any position,” she said. “But it is funny, because my dad was a doctor and a politician.”

Andrade’s father held political positions in the interior of the state Ceará in the northeast of Brazil. But, she mostly remembers conversations about his work as a doctor, not a politician.

Politicians and the dictatorship were also topics largely avoided in schools, she said.

“Schools didn’t bring this up in a clear way. It was very superficial. So there was still a lot of doubt,” she said. “If you want edto know something more… you had to talk to people who went through it, who had family members who went through it and then you can absorb the real story a little bit more.”

Alves had a different experience and still remembers the stories his mother told about the dictatorship. 

“It was authoritarian…and my mom commented that there was this fear hanging over the streets,” he said. “People would go and play, but the fear was very evident.”

In many Brazilian schools, teachers would beat children with rulers if they acted out of line or spoke out in some way against the government.

“This part of repression by teachers on children and this fear in the streets were things that my mother portrayed with great certainty, and great insecurity too,” he said.

Andrade, who teaches basic and intermediate Portuguese classes at the UA, said she hopes that students take the opportunity to see the film.

“It brings so much of our history, the history of Brazil (to the big screen),” she said. 

To Alves, Andrade and the roughly 150 Brazilians living in Tucson, “I’m Still Here” represents more than just a film.

“The film represents …  resistance, resilience,” Alves said. “And it shows that Brazil is not only soccer and samba.”

Thatcher Warrick Hess is a graduate student in the University of Arizona's bilingual journalism program and and Tucson Spotlight intern. Contact him at twarrickhess@arizona.edu.

Tucson Spotlight is a community-based newsroom that provides paid opportunities for students and rising journalists in Southern Arizona. Please support our work with a paid subscription.