'I'm Still Here' Fights to Preserve the History of Brazil's Dictatorship
‘I’m Still Here’ Fights to Preserve the History of Brazil’s Dictatorship
Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
The Academy Award-winning film spotlights the ongoing effort in Brazil to ensure the atrocities committed during the country’s dictatorship period are remembered.
By Nicole Froio
7 MIN READ
Apr 24, 2025
In the late 1970s, the military regime in Brazil was preparing to return the country to democratic rule. Since 1964, the country had been ruled by an undemocratic military government, and after years of popular protest and armed resistance, the military leaders were planning a gradual re-democratization process.
In more than a decade of dictatorship rule, the military had imprisoned, tortured, and killed scores of people they viewed as dissidents, and in 1979, a newly passed law gave amnesty to political prisoners and exiles whom the dictatorship persecuted. But the amnesty law also pardoned the murderers, torturers, and leaders of the military dictatorship, setting the stage for a 25-year struggle to get the Brazilian government to recognize the victims and perpetrators of human rights abuses of the regime.
With no institutional recognition of human rights abuses committed between 1964 to 1985, the door was open for denial and diminishment of that brutal period in Brazilian history. In right-wing circles, the dictatorship is often viewed as “not that bad,” or as a necessary evil to keep Brazil from opting into communism, a common Cold War talking point.
It was only in 2011, more than 25 years after the end of the regime, that the Brazilian government instituted a truth commission to investigate the torture and murder that took place during that era.
The success of I’m Still Here, this year’s Academy Award winner for best international feature, might give the appearance that Brazil is a country committed to remembering its past—but behind the film, there’s a multigenerational, ongoing struggle to keep remembering the victims and the perpetrators of harm during the dictatorship period.
More:
https://www.yesmagazine.org/political-power/2025/04/24/im-still-here-brazil-memory-reclamation