Once in a while, a film appears that does more than recount a series of events. It gives truth a body. A pulse. I’m Still Here, directed by Walter Salles, is one of those rare works. Drawn from Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir, the film leads us quietly into the fragile heart of a family fractured by Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–1985). At the centre stands Eunice Paiva, brought to life with astonishing depth by Fernanda Torres, a mother whose courage becomes shelter when everything else collapses.
The story opens in 1970s Rio de Janeiro. Eunice lives with her husband Rubens, a former congressman turned architect, and their five children near the bright stretch of Ipanema Beach. Their home hums with music, books, art, and easy laughter. It feels untouched. Almost innocent. But even paradise shudders when authority arrives in uniform. One night, men come “for questioning.” Rubens never comes back. From that moment on, Eunice, once the quiet centre of her family, must become its stronghold.
Salles directs with patience and restraint. He allows scenes to breathe: a soufflé rising in the oven; the clatter of a typewriter; sea air drifting through open windows. These small details matter. Adrian Teijido’s cinematography captures Rio’s sunlit beauty while slowly letting fear seep into the frame. The music follows the same path. Warm. Nostalgic. Gently aching. It turns history into memory.
The performances carry the film’s soul. Fernanda Torres, in her Oscar-nominated role, does not play Eunice as a monument or a symbol. She plays her as a woman of flesh and faith, worn by pain and held together by love. Her resistance is quiet and devastating. In one unforgettable moment, a newspaper photographer asks the family to “look sad” for an article about her missing husband. Eunice replies, “Smile, that’s life.” In that line sits the film’s deepest truth. Joy is not the absence of suffering. It is the refusal to let suffering have the final word.
When Jesus spoke of the wise man who built his house on rock (Matthew 7:24–25), he was not talking about bricks or walls. He was speaking of foundations. Faith. Truth. Love. What Jesus taught in parables, Eunice lives out in silence. When her husband is taken, fear and despair are close at hand. They would have been on the easier ground. The sand. Instead, she builds on rock. Her rock is love. Her trust in life. Her fierce devotion to her children. Her quiet belief that goodness, even wounded, will endure. As her country slides into darkness, she becomes a house that still stands.
There is a striking scene after Eunice’s imprisonment. She stands under the shower, scrubbing herself with a fierce urgency, as if water alone might erase the filth and terror of the cell. She is not just washing her body. She is reclaiming her soul. The water becomes grace, a quiet baptism into a harder, braver version of herself. In that moment, Isaiah’s promise feels close at hand: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” Eunice emerges not merely clean, but changed. Reborn, not only to endure, but to resist.
Later, she declines an invitation to go out with friends. Her reason is simple: “I have children to look after.” The words sound almost mundane, yet they carry the weight of the Gospel. For Eunice, love is not abstract. It is a vocation. Motherhood becomes her mission field. Like Mary standing at the foot of the Cross, she does not flee suffering. She remains. She holds her place.
Then there is the family photograph. She smiles, even though her husband’s death hangs in the air, unnamed and unresolved. In that smile, something unmistakably Christian breaks through. Resurrection hope, fragile but real. She refuses to let her family appear defeated because her faith is not rooted in circumstances. It is grounded in conviction.
Salles never preaches. Religion is never imposed. Yet spirituality hums beneath every frame. The church scenes. The silent prayers. The dignity with which Eunice treats even those who have harmed her. All of it points to a strength that does not come from within alone. Her story reminds us that faith is not measured by how loudly God is invoked, but by how deeply love is lived when words fall short.
In a world where political noise often drowns compassion, where fear fractures families and communities, I’m Still Here offers a quiet gospel. It asks an uncomfortable question: what are we building our lives on? The shifting sands of comfort, approval, and safety? Or the rock of love that holds fast through loss? Eunice’s life tells us that faith does not always resemble victory. Sometimes it looks like persistence. Like smiling through tears. Like making dinner after a day steeped in despair. Like refusing to let hatred speak last.
At one point, she tells the press, “You kill one person, you condemn the rest to eternal psychological torture.” There is no rage in her voice. Only clarity. She understands that evil corrodes everyone it touches, both victim and perpetrator. Yet her answer is not revenge. It is rebuilding. That is the rock on which she stands.
I’m Still Here is not simply a film about dictatorship or loss. It is about a strength that cannot be silenced. It is about a woman who shows us that joy can be an act of protest, love a form of resistance, and hope the deepest expression of faith.
When the storms of life come, when injustice, loss, or fear shake our world, are we building our house on rock, or on sand?
