Walter Salles, 68, is Brazil’s most internationally celebrated film-maker. He came to global prominence in 1998 with the poignant road movie Central Station, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival and received two Oscar nominations, and has since released English-language films including Dark Water and On the Road and had an arthouse hit with the Che Guevara biopic The Motorcycle Diaries. For his first feature film in 12 years, I’m Still Here, he returned to Brazil to tell the true story of Eunice Paiva, an activist and mother coping with the forced disappearance of her husband during the country’s military dictatorship. Last month, its star, Fernanda Torres, won the Golden Globe for best actress and the film is up for three Oscars, including one for best picture – a first for Brazilian cinema.

You actually knew the Paiva family while growing up in Rio. How did that acquaintance help when making I’m Still Here?
I was 13 years old, and Nalu, the middle of the five kids of the Paiva family, was exactly my age, and we had a mutual friend. This is how I got to be invited into a family that differed drastically from mine. Politics were freely discussed in that environment, as well as an alternative project for Brazil, and this in a moment where we had already been for five years under military dictatorship. The way people intermingled in that free space was something very unique: I felt invited to be part of a community. In doing the film, I tried to extend that invitation, to let the spectator be part of that community that I had the luck to know in my adolescence, so that you wouldn’t see these characters from a distance.

The film is predominantly set in the 1970s but it feels politically timely given Brazil’s recent political tumult. Did you make it with that in mind?
At the beginning, we thought the film would offer a reflection of a period that wasn’t sufficiently portrayed in cinema, because we lived through 21 years of censorship. But, as we were developing the project, the extreme right rose in Brazil to the point that we understood how fragile our young democracy is. That was when all of us understood that it’s also a film about our present.

Fernanda Torres gives a devastating performance as Eunice – and the film also reunites you with her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, who was the lead in Central Station. Did you always plan to cast them both?
We cast Fernanda Montenegro first, actually. I was in doubt whether Fernanda Torres would be interested, because she has become such a successful comedian in Brazil, and has also done plays and written novels. She’s an extraordinary renaissance woman. But once she decides to do something, she has such faith in cinema that she jumps without a parachute.

And now, like her mother in 1999, she has been Oscar-nominated. As a director, what does that mean to you?
I was really moved by that, because, first, I believe she’s so deserving. But it’s also that there’s a whole school of Brazilian acting being recognised, coming after her mother’s nomination 26 years ago.

Some say awards season has become an industry in itself these days. Do you feel the difference?
The last time I was part of it was for The Motorcycle Diaries in 2005. For that film, I came to the US once or twice for screenings and Q&As, and then to London for an incredible presentation hosted by my dearest friend Anthony Minghella. And that was it. And for Central Station, I would say the campaigning period was much shorter. There were fewer prizes and fewer events around the Oscars, and I think that this allowed for cinema to be at the heart of the discussion, as opposed to noise.

Speaking of said noise, your film was briefly brought into the controversy surrounding Emilia Pérez, when its star Karla Sofía Gascón criticised your leading lady Fernanda Torres’s social media campaign. Did you wade into that?
The advantage of not having social media – and I don’t have any – is that you determine a certain distance from your personal life to what is in other territories, and that felt like the correct thing to do, you know? Fernanda, a few days before the event that you’re referring to, posted to embrace all the actors in [her category]. And I thought that was a beautiful gesture. This is what cinema, for me, stands for. Full stop.

The best picture nomination for I’m Still Here wasn’t widely predicted – were you surprised?
We always knew it would depend on how many voters would actually see the film. But I feel that since Roma and since Parasite, the Academy is more sensitive to more polyphonic narratives. And that’s a really positive aspect of things.

You’ve worked extensively outside Brazil, but are you still happiest making films at home?
There’s a wonderful line by Duke Ellington. He said the first step to become a musician is to listen to great musicians, and the second, is to listen to yourself. I’ve always tried to listen to myself, and it’s much easier to do that when you’re in your own culture. Because you can find all the elements to better unveil a theme or draw a character. But when you’re not finding it, you can always find paths that lead you to better understand what you’re trying to construct.

So when you’re adapting Che Guevara (The Motorcycle Diaries) or Jack Kerouac (On the Road), how easy is it to find that path?
I have the best possible memories of a project like The Motorcycle Diaries. Robert Redford had the rights, and he thought of adapting it himself, but then he realised that he wasn’t born in South America, and didn’t speak Spanish and so forth. So I was invited to do it, but I only accepted when I did the journey that is described in the book, that crossed four countries, and felt I was sufficiently immersed and understood the cultural roots of that journey. But maybe, with On the Road, as much as I admire the book and the consciousness of the beat generation, as much as I admire jazz, admiration may be not enough to actually authorise you to pursue a project.

Your film has an extraordinary online fandom among Brazilians: I think a lot of journalists this year have been struck by their ardency and advocacy. Have you noticed that?
I would say, to contextualise that, we suffered a double pandemic in Brazil. Not only the Covid pandemic, but the fact that the extreme-right government didn’t buy vaccines, and Brazil had the highest number of deaths per capita in the world. Cinema was deeply affected by that. The public took a long, long time to go back to cinemas – and when they did, it was for blockbusters, you know? So, for us, it was a surprise and a gift to realise that not only did the public come to cinemas to actually share a collective experience, but to re-encounter a hidden part of Brazilian history that affected different generations.

• I’m Still Here is in cinemas on 21 February