Fernanda Torres explains why I'm Still Here is resonating with audiences outside of Brazil
The Brazilian actor has received an Oscar nod for her performance as Eunice Paiva
Note: Fernanda Torres has recently come under fire for appearing in blackface in a 2008 episode of the Brazilian sketch comedy series Fantastico, which resurfaced earlier this week. She subsequently apologized in an interview with Deadline, saying "I am very sorry for this. I'm making this statement as it is important for me to address this swiftly to avoid further pain and confusion."
The blackface incident was not mentioned in her Q interview, as it was recorded prior to the reappearance of the footage from Fantastico.
Fernanda Torres says one of the reasons her latest film, I'm Still Here, resonates so deeply with audiences outside of Brazil is because "it's centred in a family" — something that's universal. For her performance, the Brazilian actor won this year's Golden Globe for best actress in a drama and she's up for best actress at the Oscars.
"Everybody understands, deep in their hearts, what [it would] mean to have your father assassinated, tortured and [for you] to be left alone with your mother," Torres tells Q host Tom Power in an interview. "If you are a mother, to be left alone with five children, having to reinvent yourself during a tragic moment."
I'm Still Here is about life under the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1965 to 1985. It tells the story of Eunice Paiva, whose husband Rubens Paiva — an opposition politician — was kidnapped and executed by the military in 1971. Torres says even in her own country, Paiva was somewhat of a forgotten hero, initially overshadowed by her husband and then by her son, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, who wrote the 2015 book I'm Still Here on which the film is based.
"[The book is] when we really discovered Eunice," Torres says. "The book is about the son in his adulthood discovering that the real hero of the family was not the father, not him, but it was this amazing woman called Eunice Paiva."
One of the things that drew Torres to the role was the way Paiva re-invented herself after the authorities took her husband (Rubens was later declared dead in absentia). The actor says Eunice was "raised to be this perfect housewife from the '50s" and "the great woman behind the great man," but instead turned out to be an important figure in her own right.
"At the age of 46 she went back to university [and] became a lawyer," Torres explains. "In the '80s, she was one of the first people to be fighting for the Indigenous [autonomy and land rights] in Brazil. Today we have a lot of the Amazon forest saved thanks to Eunice. And then she was part of the constitution in Brazil in '88 during the democratization of the country."
Despite all this, Eunice remained humble and avoided self-promotion, which is why her story was almost lost until her son wrote I'm Still Here.
"It's like a woman who always fights the right fight, and she never had the will to be recognized by this, which is kind of strange nowadays," the actor tells Power. "Everybody's selling themselves on the internet, everybody has this will to sell yourself, to make propaganda about your life, and Eunice, on the contrary, she was a woman who never felt like it was important for her to be recognized.… I could spend hours talking about why she's so unique."
The full interview with Fernanda Torres is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Fernanda Torres produced by Lise Hosein.