I'm Still Here

The memoir behind the Oscar-winning film.

When Marcelo Rubens Paiva was eleven years old, his father was taken from their home in Rio and tortured to death by the Brazilian military dictatorship. Twenty-five years later, his mother, Eunice, helped bring into law a way for the families of the regime’s victims to have their deaths formally acknowledged.

Eunice – charming, glamorous, and someone who never let anyone see her cry – answered the shock of widowhood by going back to law school in her forties while raising five children alone, and went on to become a tireless advocate for Brazil’s Indigenous peoples. Decades later, as she slips into Alzheimer’s, her son sets out to piece together her story and his own.

I’m Still Here is a wry, deeply moving and compassionate account of how one family went from sun-soaked innocence to a lifelong commitment to justice – for themselves, for democracy and for the truth.