Brazil’s First Oscar Hits A Political Nerve Amid Bolsonaro Probe

Brazil erupted Sunday night when the movie I'm Still Here became the first Oscar winner in the country's history — in the middle of national Carnival celebrations, no less.  

But the triumph of the film that details a woman's fight with the Brazilian dictatorship over the disappearance of her husband in the 1970s also hit a nerve in the nation of 210 million.

Ainda Estou Aqui, as it is titled in Portuguese, debuted in Brazil amid an ongoing legal probe into former President Jair Bolsonaro's role in the Jan. 8, 2023 insurrection attempt carried out by his supporters against Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who had narrowly won the election. 

The film, which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature, is based on a 2015 memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, a son of the movie's subjects. It was always likely to split opinion in Brazil, where efforts to fully reckon with the 1964 coup that established a brutal military regime have for decades proved controversial. 

Lula, whose leftist Workers' Party traces its origins to anti-dictatorship activism, celebrated the victory on social media, saying he was proud of the the country's artists and its democracy. Other lawmakers, political figures and celebrities quickly joined in. 

Bolsonaro, by contrast, dismissed I'm Still Here in a January interview with Bloomberg News, saying that he was “not even going to waste my time” watching a movie that only told “one side” of the story. 

His supporters also launched an unofficial boycott in theaters, while Marcelo Rubens Paiva was hit with a backpack and had a beer can thrown at him during a street festival in Sao Paulo, according to local newspaper reports.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain who surged to the presidency in 2018, has celebrated the military regime that ruled Brazil until 1985 throughout his career while brushing aside disappearances, murders and human rights abuses it committed. During that election, some of his most radical supporters openly called for the return of military rule.

In February, just more than a month after actress Fernanda Torres won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Film, Brazil's top prosecutor filed federal charges against Bolsonaro and military officials who'd served in his government for allegedly plotting a coup after his defeat.

I'm Still Here became the fifth-highest grossing film in Brazilian history, according to data from the National Film Agency. It has also been a phenomenon with critics and audiences, drawing rave reviews in Brazil and abroad. 

The rare success for a Brazilian film on the world stage even turned it into a major theme of the planet's largest Carnival celebrations. Before Sunday, only one other Brazilian had been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar — Torres' mother, Fernanda Montenegro, for her performance in Central Station in 1999. 

In Rio, where I'm Still Here is set, cadres of revelers — many donning masks of Torres and costumes inspired by the movie — stopped the party briefly to watch it do what no other Brazilian film had before.