Ahead of the Oscars ceremony, Brazil’s Fernanda Torres – star of Walter Salles’s dictatorship-era movie I’m Still Here – had warned her compatriots not to get into a “World Cup fever” over the Academy Awards.
Her plea went in vain on Sunday night, however, as crowds across the country – already gathered to celebrate carnival – erupted in joy over Brazil’s first-ever Oscar win, for best international feature.
At the world-famous symbol of Brazilian carnival, the Rio Sambadrome, tens of thousands cheered when the announcer declared: “The Oscar is ours!”
The drama directed by Salles – which tells the true story of Eunice Paiva, whose husband Rubens was forcibly disappeared during Brazil’s dictatorship – did not win the other two awards it was nominated for: best actress and best picture.
But families of the regime’s victims argue that the film – seen by more than 5 million people in Brazil – has given the country something perhaps even more significant than more Oscars, as they hope it drives a fundamental shift in how Brazilians confront one of the most brutal periods in their history.
How did it begin?
Brazil’s leftist president, João Goulart, was toppled in a coup in April 1964. General Humberto Castelo Branco became leader, political parties were banned, and the country was plunged into 21 years of military rule.
The repression intensified under Castelo Branco’s hardline successor, Artur da Costa e Silva, who took power in 1967. He was responsible for a notorious decree called AI-5 that gave him wide ranging dictatorial powers and kicked off the so-called “anos de chumbo” (years of lead), a bleak period of tyranny and violence which would last until 1974.
What happened during the dictatorship?
Supporters of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime - including Jair Bolsonaro - credit it with bringing security and stability to the South American country and masterminding a decade-long economic “miracle”.
It also pushed ahead with several pharaonic infrastructure projects including the still unfinished Trans-Amazonian highway and the eight-mile bridge across Rio’s Guanabara bay.
But the regime, while less notoriously violent than those in Argentina and Chile, was also responsible for murdering or killing hundreds of its opponents and imprisoning thousands more. Among those jailed and tortured were Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, then a leftwing rebel.
It was also a period of severe censorship. Some of Brazil’s best-loved musicians - including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso - went into exile in Europe, writing songs about their enforced departures.
How did it end?
Political exiles began returning to Brazil in 1979 after an amnesty law was passed that began to pave the way for the return of democracy.
But the pro-democracy “Diretas Já” (Direct elections now!) movement only hit its stride in 1984 with a series of vast and historic street rallies in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte.
Civilian rule returned the following year and a new constitution was introduced in 1988. The following year Brazil held its first direct presidential election in nearly three decades.
“This is a special moment for the country: the chance to give new meaning to so many things … and finally move forward through justice,” said Leo Alves Vieira, 47, whose grandfather Mário Alves de Souza Vieira was kidnapped, tortured and killed by the army in 1970. De Souza’s body was never found.
“I’m Still Here is the most powerful tool we’ve had so far to fight for this memory,” he said.
Federal prosecutor Eugênia Augusta Gonzaga said that “never before in Brazil has there been such awareness of … the need to continue the work of searching for bodies, uncovering the truth, and holding those responsible to account.”
Gonzaga, the current president of the Commission on Deaths and Disappearances – the government body responsible for establishing the actual cause of death of those killed by the regime – attributes this new interest to both the film and the attempted coup on 8 January 2023 when far-right supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the seat of government in Brasília.
The film tells the story of Eunice Paiva’s search for her husband, Rubens, a 41-year-old politician who was taken from his home in 1971 by agents of the dictatorship.
Eunice was a member of the commission when it was first set up in 1995.
The following year, the Brazilian state finally acknowledged her husband’s death – a scene portrayed in the movie, which shows Eunice telling reporters that it is essential to investigate and prosecute all crimes committed during the dictatorship because, “if that does not happen, nothing will stop them from being carried out again with impunity”.
Brazil’s recent past has given the film particular resonance: it was during the Oscars campaign that Bolsonaro – an outspoken admirer of the military – was formally indicted for his role in the attempted coup.
Among the 33 members of his government also implicated were generals and an admiral, marking the first time high-ranking military officers have been charged with attempting a coup in Brazil’s history.
Due to an amnesty law introduced after the 1964–1985 dictatorship, no military personnel were held accountable for more than 400 deaths and disappearances.
“There is a lack of punishment for the torturers,” said Diva Santana, 80, who has been fighting for nearly five decades for the memory of her sister, Dinaelza Santana Coqueiro, who was disappeared by the army in 1973, at the age of 20.
In a move that many see as a direct result of the release of I’m Still Here, the Brazilian supreme court recently reopened the debate over whether the amnesty applies to crimes that persist to the present day, such as the concealment of bodies.
The national justice council also decided that the death certificates of victims like Paiva, Vieira and Coqueiro should not only state that they are “disappeared”, but also identify them as victims of a “non-natural, violent [death] caused by the Brazilian state in the context of the systematic persecution of political dissidents during the dictatorship”.
“The impact of the film and the events of 8 January have shifted the focus on accountability,” said prosecutor Gonzaga. “We’ve already wasted too much time and can’t afford to lose another second.”
Santana said that, after so many years, many of the torturers had already died. But she hoped they, too, would be condemned. “Justice needs to recognise the responsibility of all of them. And those who are still alive need to go to prison and serve time, just like Black and poor people do in Brazil,” she said.
