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“I’ve never worked with such a profound character,” reveals Fernanda Torres about starring in the critically acclaimed “I’m Still Here.” For our recent webchat the renowned Brazilian actress adds, “there are so many layers of doubt and anger and fear. This is a tragic story which is not a melodrama. It’s not something that you just rely on your self-pity. You have to be strong. Eunice is such a profound character with so many contradictions,” she says, noting that the film and Eunice’s story ultimately stand for “the importance of art, the resistance of art, the importance of freedom, and all of that Eunice teaches us to do, not by screaming, but with civility, humanity, and dignity.” Watch our video interview above.

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“I’m Still Here” is directed by Walter Salles from a screenplay by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega,...

At a moment in history where developed democracies around the world seem receptive to political candidates with authoritarian tendencies, the story of Rubens and Eunice Paiva feels increasingly relevant. Rubens was a Brazilian politician who was murdered for his opposition to the implementation of military dictatorship in 1968. After his death, Eunice established herself as one of the nation’s most committed human rights activists.

The story of clinging to principles in unimaginably challenging circumstances comes to life in Walter Salles’ new film “I’m Still Here,” which opens in theaters in January 2025. The biopic aims to put Eunice Paiva in the spotlight and shine new light on a dark chapter in South American history.

An official synopsis of the film reads, “Brazil faces the tightening grip of a military dictatorship. Eunice Paiva, a mother of five children is forced to reinvent herself after her family suffers a violent and arbitrary act by the government.

On Tuesday, Sony Pictures Classics released the trailer for “I’m Still Here,” Brazil’s submission for International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

“I’m Still Here” tells the true story of the Paiva family, whose lives were torn apart by the Brazilian military dictatorship in the 1970s, but rebuilt through resilience. In 1971, Labour Party congressman Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) is disappeared by the military, leaving his wife Eunice alone to care for their five children. But rather than be silenced in fear, Eunice becomes an activist fighting for justice against the oppressive regime, bringing hidden history to light.

The film is directed by Walter Salles, who is making his return to the director’s chair 12 years after his last film, 2012’s “On the Road.” He’s reuniting with his “Central Station” star Montenegro, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the 1998 film and is still...

Sony Pictures Classics on Wednesday announced release dates for two of its acclaimed festival titles, The Room Next Door and I’m Still Here, both of which premiered in Venice.

Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, who has long been in business with the studio, The Room Next Door will be released in NY and L.A. theaters on December 20 and expand to select cities on January 10 before opening nationwide on January 17.

Directed by Walter Salles from a script by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, I’m Still Here is getting a one-week awards-qualifying run in November and releases in New York and Los Angeles on January 17 before expanding to theaters nationwide on February 14.

Taking home the top prize of the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, and John Turturro, marks Almodóvar’s first English-language feature. The film follows Ingrid...

Sony Pictures Classics has updated its release dates for awards contenders The Room Next Door and I’m Still Here.

Pedro Almodóvar’s euthanasia drama The Room Next Door won the Venice Golden Lion and will open theatrically on December 20 in New York and Los Angeles, before expanding to select cities on January 10, 2025, and then opening nationwide on January 17, 2025.

Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton star as reunited friends who spend a month together after one reveals she has a terminal illness. John Turturro also stars. The feature marksSpanish maestroAlmodóvar’s first in English.

Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here will open in...

Walter Salles’s Brazilian Oscar submission I’m Still Here will open the 16th Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival later this month with the filmmaker and star Fernanda Torres in attendance.

I’m Still Here tells the true story of Eunice Jovem, a wife and mother who must reinvent herself and protect her family in the early 1970s when her husband, a former politician, disappears under the military dictatorship.

Torres has earned acclaim for her role and will take part in a post-screening Q&a at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The festival runs October 29 to November 2.

Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega...

Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. Et/ 4:00 p.m. Pt. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

Sequels have been a dominant part of the Best Adapted Screenplay conversation the past couple years, and though those productions show no signs of stopping, we have finally leveled out this year, with only two or three sequels that are seriously in the screenplay awards conversation serving as follow-ups to scripts that have already been nominated for the Oscar.

Though there is a lot of trickiness around how to campaign “Dune: Part Two,” being that voters do not often flock toward the second film in a proposed trilogy,...

There are traces of something genuinely exploratory in Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here, the director’s first fiction feature in 12 years and certainly one of his most personal. Based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir, the film traces the effects that the 1971 state-sanctioned kidnapping and murder of the author’s father, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), have on his immediate family, especially his beleaguered wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), who was partially unaware of Rubens’s political dissidence. In the background, the gears of the Brazilian military dictatorship grind ever onward, and there are continuous suggestions of vaster, more clandestine intrigue. The film’s perspective, though, remains firmly aligned with Eunice’s.

Salles knew the Paiva clan personally, having befriended middle daughter Nalu (portrayed here by Bárbara Luz) as an adolescent in Rio de Janeiro. The family’s household, where much of I’m Still Here takes place, is rendered with...

Walter Salles shows the way that the horror of a dictatorship can invade a family unit without warning and take up residence in his moving drama, that wraps us in the warmth of the Paiva family’s embrace before their nightmare begins. I’m Still Here is written by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega and based on the true story of ex-congressman/engineer Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) and his family, as outlined in the book by Rubens’ son Marcelo (played by Guilherme Silveira as a youngster and then Antonio Saboia), but Salles has also known the family for decades, which shines brightly in the detail. Family, in general, is the key to a film, which unlike many concerning Latin American dictatorships, retains its domestic focus.

We quickly get to know the Paivas at a bustle of a day on the beach in which volleyball, tanning and stray dog adoption will all play a part.

Brazil has selected Walter Salles’ well-received comeback feature I’m Still Here to represent it in the Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

The picture stars Fernanda Torres as the real-life figure of Eunice Paiva, whose husband Rubens Paiva disappeared in the early years of the 1964-1985 Brazilian military dictatorship.

Torres’ mother Fernanda Montenegro, who is considered one of the greatest Brazilian actresses of all time, also briefly shares the Eunice Paiva role, appearing as the protagonist in her final years. They are joined in the cast by Selton Mello as Rubens Paiva.

Related: Best International Feature Film Oscar Winners Through The Years: Photo Gallery

The project also reunites Salles with his regular collaborator, the director Daniela Thomas, who takes an artistic producer credit.

The picture enjoyed a buzzy world premiere in Venice in Competition, receiving a 10-minute ovation and going on to win Best Screenplay for Heitor Lorega and Murilo Hauser.

Sometimes, the greatest horrors of history can come from how easily violence and cruelty is enacted by faces you never see. This is what not only allows them to continue carrying out grave injustices, but makes holding them accountable next to impossible.

In Walter Salles’ drama “I’m Still Here,” which is based on the memoir of the same name, this lack of justice instills the film with an agonizing sense of despair. However, Salles also injects it with rich humanity by ensuring the faces of those trying to survive are the ones that we never forget. Just as there is pain from all we don’t see, there is a sense of tragic poetry from following a person who dedicates their life to the pursuit of justice even as it remains in short supply for them.

From the moment we first see Fernanda Torres as Eunice out swimming in the...

With the possible exception of the animated feature The Wild Robot, no film that has had its world premiere or North American premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival has been more warmly received than I’m Still Here, Walter Salles’ deeply moving portrait of one family’s experience under the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 through 1985.

After being unveiled last week at the Venice Film Festival, where the jury awarded it the best screenplay prize, the film debuted in Toronto at the TIFF Lightbox on Monday afternoon, where — in the presence of Salles and stars Fernanda Torres and Selton Mello — it was greeted with an enthusiastic minute-long standing ovation. (Unlike Cannes and Venice, Toronto is not a fest where standing ovations of any length are a given).

I’m Still Here was adapted from Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 book Ainda Estou Aqui by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega, and centers on the Paiva family,...

Se trata de la primera película española en ganar el León de Oro en toda la historia del Festival de Cine de Venecia. © Getty Images

La 81 edición del prestigioso Festival de Venecia ha llegado a su fin, marcando un hito en la historia del cine español. La película La habitación de al lado, dirigida por Pedro Almodóvar y protagonizada por Tilda Swinton y Julianne Moore, el que es su primer largometraje rodado íntegramente en inglés, se ha alzado con el codiciadísimo León de Oro, el máximo galardón de la Biennale. Y, decimos que es historia, porque se trata de la primera vez que una película española obtiene este galardón.

Históricamente, Venecia ha sido un trampolín para las películas que aspiran a la gloria en los Oscar. De las diez últimas ganadoras del León de Oro, cuatro han sido nominadas al Oscar a la mejor película, y dos de ellas (La forma del agua...

Pedro Almodóvar with his Golden Lion for The Room Next Door Photo: A Avezzu/La Biennale di Venezia/Foto Asac Veteran Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar took home the top prize Golden Lion in Venice last night for The Room Next Door.

Dedicating the prize to his family, he said: "It is my first movie in English... but the spirit is Spanish.” The film is an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, on focuses on the rekindled friendship between two women (Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton).

The Best Director Silver Lion was awarded to Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, starring Adrian Brody and Felicity Jones, which charts the tale of a Holocaust survivor who moves to the US. Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega wo the Silver Lion for their script for Walter Salles political drama I’m Still Here.

The night of celebration was also marked by...

Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in ‘The Room Next Door’ (Photo Credit: Sony Classics)

The 2024 Venice Film Festival winners were announced on September 7th, with Oscar-winner Pedro Almodóvar (Talk to Her) earning the Golden Lion for Best Film for The Room Next Door. Almodóvar took home the coveted prize for this first English-language film, and he dedicated the win to his family. “It is my first movie in English but the spirit is Spanish,” said the acclaimed filmmaker.

Academy Award-winner Nicole Kidman was named Best Actress for her starring role in director Halina Reijn’s Babygirl. Kidman wasn’t able to attend the ceremony, and Reijn read a statement accepting the award. “Today, I arrived in Venice to find out shortly after that my brave and beautiful mother Janelle Ann Kidman has just passed. I’m in shock and I have to go to my family. But this award is for her.

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door won the Golden Lion for best film at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.

Almodóvar’s first English-language feature marks the first time he has won the top award at one of the three major film festivals. Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore star in the story of a woman who makes the decision to end her life, and the friend who re-enters her world around this time.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Sony Pictures Classics will release the film in the US on December 20, with Warner Bros handling multiple international territories including UK-Ireland.

Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” won the Golden Lion at the 81st Venice Film Festival. The Spanish auteur’s first feature in English took the top prize at the awards ceremony on Saturday, where he accepted the honor in person. Based on Sigrid Nunez’s novel “What Are You Going Through,” the film stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore as friends who reunite after several years.

Though Almodóvar’s latest was not reviewed as enthusiastically as most of his films (a high bar to cross), the drama was still favored to do well at the Venice awards. When it premiered earlier this week, it was met with a lengthy standing ovation of almost 20 minutes — a warm reception even for festival audiences. And few are the cinephiles in Europe who do not consider the director of “All About My Mother,” “Talk to Her,” “Volver,” “Bad Education” and “Parallel Mothers” a living great.

While last year’s strikes created a somewhat subdued energy on the Lido with very few talent able to be present, this year’s 2024 Venice Film Festival proved to hot and steamy. And we’re not just talking about the excessive heat movie stars and fan alike were subjected to. Films like Halina Reijn’s erotic thriller “Babygirl” and Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S. Burrough’s short novel “Queer” aroused audience interest with career-best performances from Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig and highly revealing sexual interplay. However it was Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” that took home the coveted Golden Lion, marking the first time the filmmaker has won a top prize at any major festival throughout his career.

Brady Corbet returned to the Palazzo del Cinema with his four-hour post-wwii epic “The Brutalist,” which screened to rave reception and earned the director the Silver Lion,...

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door has won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion main prize.

Jury president Isabelle Huppert and her jury were on hand to bestow the Golden Lion along with the other main prizes. Scroll down to see the list of laureates.

Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore star in Almodóvar’s euthanasia drama, which marked the acclaimed filmmaker’s English-language debut.

The movie follows Ingrid (Moore) and Martha (Swinton) who were close friends in their youth, when they worked together at the same magazine. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme and bittersweet situation. Check out our review here.

Among other prize-winners on the night were Vermiglio by Maura Delpero, Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, and Nicole Kidman for Babygirl whose filmmaker Halina Reijn accepted the award on behalf of Kidman who she explained could not be there in...

Walter Salles’ drama I’m Still Here enjoyed a buzzy world premiere in competition at Venice, with Fernanda Torres’ lead performance putting her among the hot contenders for the best actress prize, and now arrives in Toronto for its North American debut before heading to San Sebastian.

Torres plays the real-life figure of Eunice Paiva, whose husband Rubens Paiva disappeared in the early years of the 1964 to 1985 Brazilian military dictatorship.

The civil engineer and former leftist congressman had initially gone into exile after the coup but returned to Brazil to reunite with his wife and children, taking up residence in a beachfront house in Rio de Janeiro. He was abducted from his home in 1971 by military forces and never seen again by his family.

Eunice Paiva relentlessly pursued the truth about what happened to her husband at the same time as keeping a roof over the heads of their five children.

The Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles developed I’m Still Here for seven years before it premiered as part of Venice’s Main Competition this year. That brings us closer to the time when a book of the same name was first published in Brazil: I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui), the 2015 memoir of Marcelo Rubens Paiva. Marcelo is the son of Rubens Paiva, an ex-Congressman whose opposition to the Brazilian military dictatorship resulted in exile in 1964 until, in 1971, he was made to disappear. Salles, who knew the Paiva family personally, centers his film around that traumatic event as experienced by Eunice (Fernanda Torres), wife of Rubens and a mother of five.

In the film, Brazil’s military dictatorship is felt but kept at the periphery of the frame. As the opening shot shows Eunice swimming in the ocean, Rio’s blue skies are momentarily pierced by a helicopter flying over.

Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, the first narrative feature from the acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker in 12 years, traveled to the Lido’s Sala Grande this evening. Following the world premiere screening, the Venice Film Festival competition drama was welcomed with a 10-minute, 20-second ovation.

The audience gave a rousing response to the emotional political drama about one woman’s battle to discover the fate of her husband who disappeared after being arrested at the family’s home in Rio de Janeiro in 1970.

Salles, known for such critical hits as Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries, was joined in Venice by cast members including Fernanda Torres and Selton Mello, as well as the author of the film’s source material, Marcelo Rubens Paiva.

Set in Brazil in 1971, I’m Still Here charts a country in turmoil and the tightening grip of a military dictatorship. Based on Paiva’s memoir about his mother, Eunice Paiva,...

Walter Salles’ 1998 international breakthrough, Central Station, earned an Oscar nomination for the magnificent Fernanda Montenegro. Now in her 90s, the actress turns up toward the end of the director’s first feature in his native Brazil in 16 years, the shattering I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui), in a role that requires her to speak only through her expressive eyes. What makes the connection even more poignant is that she appears as the elderly, infirm version of the protagonist — a woman of quiet strength and resistance played by Montenegro’s daughter, Fernanda Torres, with extraordinary grace and dignity in the face of emotional suffering.

Many powerful films have been made about the 21 years of military dictatorship in Brazil, from 1964 through 1985, just as they have about similar oppressive regimes in neighboring South American countries like Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. The human rights abuses of systematic torture, murder and forced disappearances represent an...

As the title might suggest, Walter Salles’ first dramatic feature in 12 years is ultimately a celebration of Brazil — not only of the resilience of its liberalism under tyrannical rulers, but of its sunlight, its carnival spirit and the delicious blue of the sea that rolls onto Rio de Janeiro’s broad beaches. I’m Still Here tells the true story of the Paivas and their five children, whose easy, giggling closeness is documented by middle daughter Eliana with her Super 8 camera — the Christmas present of choice in 1970 — in a film we see within the film. The military dictatorship has its grip on the country. It is an act of rebellion to be happy.

So we watch the Paivas, a couple still visibly in love after a few decades of marriage, playing beach volleyball with their children, dad-dancing to pop songs and eating lavish dinners. Their rented house is already too small for them all,...

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.

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...

Exclusive: Walter Salles will direct and Mariana Lima will star in I’m Still Here, based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s best-selling memoir about his mother Eunice Paiva, a housewife forced to reinvent herself as an activist when her husband fell victim to the military regime that took control of Brazil in 1964. Her husband became among many who were tortured and disappeared with no due process.

Mariana Lima, one of Brazil’s most acclaimed actresses with credits that include Dark Days and Father’s Chair, will play Paiva. Murilo Hauser, who scripted the 2019 Un Certain Regard winning-Invisible Life, adapted the screenplay, with Salles overseeing the development process.

Videofilmes, Mact, and Rt Features are producing.

The film is set to begin production in Brazil early next year, with Library Pictures International providing financing. CAA Media Finance will broker domestic distribution while Wild Bunch is handling international sales, excluding Brazil. The sellers...

Karim Aïnouz’s beguilingly stunning “Invisible Life” is Brazil’s latest cinematic treasure. Even as the country’s conservative government threatens to cut the funding to the robust film scene that has given us critically acclaimed works like “Aquarius,” “Neon Bull” and “The Second Mother,” there are works like “Invisible Life” that remind international audiences of the stories the nation is fighting to tell in the face of adversity.

“Invisible Life” is a tale of two sisters in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. Guida (Julia Stockler), the slightly more adventurous one, escapes from a family dinner one night to go out with a mysterious suitor, a Greek sailor. She disappears the next morning, leaving behind only a note and one of her grandmother’s earrings she had left with the night before.

Her sister, Eurídice (Carol Duarte), blames herself for covering for her sister to leave the family without so much as saying goodbye.

As we enter the holidays Lionsgate and Bron Studios are looking to explode with the nationwide release of the Jay Roach-directed Bombshell starring Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie. The Fox News sexual harassment drama had a stellar limited opening last weekend, earning an estimated $312,000, with a per-screen average of $78,000. As it opens today in approximately 1,450 locations in North America, it is sure to put more coins in its piggy bank.

“This is an important, timely and topical film driven by world-class filmmakers and outstanding performances, great word of mouth, and the strong buzz and momentum after the Golden Globe and SAG nominations,” Damon Wolf, President of Worldwide Marketing for the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group told Deadline. “Last week’s sold-out special screenings led to one of the highest-grossing limited release engagements of the year and a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.”

“Bombshell is the first major movie to explore the #metoo movement,...

Exclusive: Amazon Studios has bought U.S. rights to Cannes Un Certain Regard winner The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão ahead of its North American premiere at Toronto.

European arthouse stalwart The Match Factory and CAA Media Finance brokered the deal for the well-received Brazilian film. CAA has also signed the film’s director Karim Aïnouz, an A-list festival regular.

The Portuguese-language, tropical melodrama about two sisters struggling to define themselves in the machista culture of mid-century Brazil is a strong contender to be the country’s entry for the International Feature Film Oscar. That decision will be made soon. A U.S. release date has yet to be set.

We revealed the film’s first international trailer in Cannes.

The story begins in Rio de Janeiro in 1950. Eurídice, 18, and Guida, 20, are two inseparable sisters living at home with their conservative parents. Although immersed in a traditional life, each...

Karim Aïnouz’s The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão is a tale of resistance. It hones in on two inseparable sisters stranded in–and ultimately pulled apart by–an ossified patriarchal world. It is an engrossing melodrama where melancholia teems with rage, with a tear-jerking finale that feels so devastating because of the staggering mix of love and fury that precedes it. It is, far and above, an achingly beautiful story of sisterly love.

Based on a 2015 novel by Martha Batalha, the director’s Un Certain Regard winner homes in on two young sisters in 1950s Rio de Janeiro, the eponymous 18-year-old Eurídice (Carol Duarte) and 20-year-old Guida (Júlia Stockler). Singularly titled as it may be, The Invisible Life is the story of their relationship, and the mutual struggle to escape from the confines–literal and symbolic–of the conservative household they’ve been raised in by strict father Manuel...

Exclusive: Here’s a first international trailer for A-list festival regular Karim Aïnouz’s Cannes Un Certain Regard drama The Invisible Life Of Eurídice Gusmão, which is being sold on the Croisette by The Match Factory.

Rt Features, Pola Pandora, Sony Pictures, Canal Brasil and The Match Factory are behind the Portuguese-language tropical melodrama about two sisters struggling to define themselves in the machista culture of midcentury Brazil. Sony plans to release the film wide in Brazil in November 2019, followed by the rest of Latin America.

The story begins in Rio de Janeiro in 1950. Eurídice, 18, and Guida, 20, are two inseparable sisters living at home with their conservative parents. Although immersed in a traditional life, each one nourishes a dream: Eurídice of becoming a renowned pianist, Guida of finding true love. In a dramatic turn, they are separated by their father and forced to live apart. The sisters take control of their separate destinies,...