Walter Salles’ Directorial Comeback ‘I’m Still Here’ Sells To Sony Classics For North America & Raft Of International Territories Out Of Cannes Market
EXCLUSIVE: Out of the Cannes market, Sony Pictures Classics has bought North American rights and a raft of international territories on Walter Salles’ anticipated first narrative feature in more than a decade: I’m Still Here.
In I’m Still Here, the acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker, known for critical hits such as Oscar nominee Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries, has tackled the emotional and powerful true story of a woman who is forced into activism after her husband is captured by the military regime in Brazil in the 1960s.
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The film reunites Salles with his Oscar-nominated Central Station star Fernanda Montenegro, one of Brazil’s most acclaimed actors, and her daughter Fernanda Torres, with whom the filmmaker has worked multiple times. It also reunites the filmmaker with SPC who previously released 1998 hit Central Station, which won the Berlin Golden Bear and was also nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Montenegro and Torres previously starred together in another SPC acquisition, The House Of Sand.
Set in Brazil in 1971, I’m Still Here charts a country in turmoil and the tightening grip of a military dictatorship. Based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir about his mother, Eunice Paiva, the true story follows a mother of five who is forced to reinvent herself when her husband is taken from their beachfront house by the military police and disappears in their custody. Above is a first look at Torres in the movie.
The project was relatively under the radar in the Cannes market but is highly thought of by arthouse buyers we’ve spoken to and is being lined up for a prestigious fall festival run.
Sony Classics has acquired all rights in North America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Turkey, Portugal, and Australia and New Zealand. The deal was done between SPC and CAA Media Finance.
Script was written by Murilo Hauser (who wrote the Un Certain Regard winner Invisible Life) and Heitor Lorega.
Producers are VideoFilmes, RT Features and Mact Productions in coproduction with Conspiração, Arte France Cinéma and Globoplay. Library Pictures International is a financier on the film.
As we previously reported three years ago, author Paiva was 11 when his father, leftist congressman Rubens Paiva, was dragged off for interrogation by the military, this after he returned from exile. He was never seen again. His wife campaigned relentlessly to find his whereabouts, at a very dangerous time when Brazilian was controlled by military dictatorship. Eunice Paiva was arrested along with her husband and held in a dark cell for 12 days before taking on her new role, which would become a race against Alzheimer’s Disease. While she was still able, she got to the bottom of her husband’s disappearance and made sure the records of events were recorded to be shared with future generations. It was concluded by the National Truth Commission that her husband had been tortured to death for receiving letters from leftist organizations.
To Salles, who grew up in Brazil and watched the country change from dictatorship to democracy, telling the story of the saga of the Paiva family was a personal mission he has spent years on. It was also a story he closely observed because he was friends with the Paiva family.
“Most of my personal projects required very long development processes, back to Central Station, which was five years, and Motorcycle Diaries was four,” Salles told us in an interview in 2021. “None took as much time as this one that I in part was a witness to when I was 13 years old. What triggered to it was the emotion I felt when I read the book, written by this friend of mine, Marcel. He was one of the five kids of the family he described in the autobiographical book that is truly about this completely normal family composed of father, mother and kids from nine to 16. They had this rich life with friends, levity, humor and a light that made a lot of us gravitate around their house. One day, the unexpected happened when the father was taken to the military headquarters for an interrogation. No one in that moment knew that was the last time they would see him again. This coincided with a moment of this Brazilian totalitarian regime, where things started to become extremely violent, and where there was censorship and torture.”
Salles, also known for movies such as Linha de Passe, the Dark Water remake and On The Road, most recently made a documentary on fellow filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke back in 2016. I’m Still Here is his first narrative feature in 12 years.
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