Hello, I'm Walter Salles, and I'm the director of “I'm still here”. We are 30 minutes in the movie, in the family home in the heart of the story. Eunice Paiva is played by Fernanda Torres and Rubens Paiva by Sriston Mello. Everything here transmits a sense of normality: light, beach sounds, the intimacy of dialogue. But then this harmony is broken by the invasion of the house, by the Military Police. Now, the camera transmits the instability of the situation, clicking with the characters. It is told to Rubens that it will be taken for an interrogation. Try to pretend that the situation is under control, but we feel it is not. For the first time in the film, Eunice's vulnerability appears. It is from here that the Eunice arch begins to take shape. From this point, the whole scene revolves around subtraction. Subtraction of light as the curtains are closed, subtraction from the sounds from the outside. Subtraction of music. When one of the five children of the couple, Nalu, enters the house with a friend, both Eunice and military officers try to pretend that normality still exists, but does not. Nalu, played by Barbara Luz, takes us to the father's room. It is a vital scene, the last conversation between a father and his daughter, staged as the true Nalu told me that it happened. There is a strange intimacy in this exchange, underlined by the affection of the daughter and the father's desire to prolong this moment. And then we understand why intimacy was illusory. This is an improvisation created in the act with actor Luiz Bertazzo, begins to take a look at the intimacy of the family. Moments like this give life to the sequence. Rubens reappears, preparing to be taken to interrogate. Try once again to create a sense of ordinarity. Here, the last hug between Rubens and Eunice is framed by military officers, emphasizing a sensation of suffocation in what was once a safe place, the family home. This is the first of the only first two planes throughout the film. We keep it for the last look between Rubens and Eunice. From now on, we are with her. “I'm still here” he becomes his movie.
