I'm Still Here and the Deadly Dangers of Unchecked Misinformation
I’m Still Here is so good, so so good, but I needed a strong pick-me-up so I could stop wadding in a pool of my own tears.
My eyes are still weary and it’s been hours. Let me find a mental reset.
Back to the topic at hand, I’m Still Here is an excellent film that is also an important piece of work during a time in which we’re seeing an information war between the facts and the misinformation and misleading propaganda from the worst people you know. This era of rampant, unchecked, and calculated misinformation has ruined entire countries, destroyed thousands of families, and has killed millions during the coronavirus era---especially with the misinformation that spread in the United States and Brazil. We’ve historically always had censorship, fake news, misleading propaganda, but with the internet it has become significantly harder to combat, while also being significantly easier to produce.
In the midst of Brazil’s troubled era of recovery post-Bolsonaro, I’m Still Here was targeted by far-right Brazilians who didn’t want the movie to even be released, claiming it was a film solely for “communists.” One of the more troubling aspects of South American politics is an attempt to deny and water down the severity of the Operation Condor Era, which involved several U.S.-backed dictatorships that killed tens of thousands of people, disappeared thousands more, and displaced millions overall. What’s worse is that almost every South American nation is still feeling some of the effects of this dark past, especially in the corners of Chile and Brazil.
It may sometimes feel like this is from some far-off era, but there were people within Bolsonaro’s administration from 2018-2022 that were literally part of the military dictatorship that had wrecked and ruled Brazil from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. You can’t be more connected to the deadly past than that.
As wonderful as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are, you’ll also find deep political pockets of people within those severely-populated regions who quite literally prefer the days of the military ruling the country with an iron fist, as they remain selective and probably even ignorant on what the consequences actually were. It is no coincidence that when Bolsonaro went into hiding in the United States, he picked the state of Florida---where you’ll find Mar-a-Lago as well as legions of other upper-class Brazilians who left the country as the pink tide was turning and there was a stronger emphasis on analyzing the controversial past.
Complicating the feelings about the dictatorship is just the general lack of conversation surrounding the era, an overall inability to come to terms with what was witnessed and suffered.
And that’s where I’m Still Here comes in to attempt to fill the void.
This isn’t an exaggeration at all, the impact from this film towards younger Brazilians echoes that of moviegoers who went to see Schindler’s List back in the 1990s and saw the harrowing details from that dark chapter being put onto film. Just like how Schindler’s List was made to ensure the remaining survivors of the Holocaust was able to see their story be told in vivid excruciating detail, there was an advanced emphasis to make I’m Still Here so that the stories from the remaining survivors of the military atrocities don’t disappear or get crushed under the weight of rampant misinformation.
The film follows the true story of a family who had become torn apart by the Brazilian military dictatorship that kidnapped the parents and even one of the daughters, before ultimately torturing them in different ways and disappearing the father. All this shocking violence while they publicly denied arresting them in the first place, leaving the foreign press to only speculate and ponder what was actually happening in Brazil.
Rubens Paiva was guilty of simply existing in Brazil under a military dictatorship that he never supported, which initially cost him his entire political career in the 1960s and ultimately his life. After initial exile to Europe, he returned and tried helping those the dictatorship deemed threats and opposition. Even with the guerilla warfare that had been happening, Paiva was never involved in armed conflict, he simply wanted to help those in need and put a spotlight on the chaos happening in his beautiful country. Just that alone would get him killed, and also a death so awful that to this day they haven’t found his body.
Part of what makes this movie such an unnerving experience is how you got to see family life under the dictatorship, where the evidence of oppression would happen in short spurts, but only until you became the literal target. Millions of families had to live this way, try to stay positive, stay normal, contribute their part to society, while remaining under the thumb of the military and having to sift through information and figure out what news and information is real, and what information is just fabrications of a fascist, controlling government.
During I’m Still Here’s first act you saw the small parties and family get-togethers, the trips to the beach, the adoption of a stray dog, and plenty of photography and filming of a loving tightknit family trying to maintain peace during an unpeaceful period. The eldest daughter was preparing for college, one of the other kids had developed an interest in volleyball, while the husband was in the middle of a big project related to his blossoming engineering career, and did his best to ensure his children maintained a slightly normal but otherwise healthy early life.
Then came a few intimidating armed men forcing Rubens to a car, and soon the family was losing everything, from their loving father to their sense of security.
As the beloved father goes missing, our main heroine Eunice Paiva battles to find the truth of what happened to her husband while trying to support her fearful and grief-stricken family. By the end of the second act the family had to abandon everything they loved about Rio de Janeiro, they lost their house, their land, their loving maid, their money, and were on their way to live in Sao Paulo in deeper obscurity in case they became targets yet again. By the time you see them on the road towards their new life in Sao Paulo, you can see the dread and emotional fatigue on everyone’s faces, as they’re all quietly coming to terms with the fact that the man they all love dearly is likely dead and gone.
Even as Eunice eventually finds justice after decades of education and work, even as she outlives the military dictatorship and sees Brazil return to a democracy, her life was nonetheless stolen and diverted permanently. She had to leave Rio and lose her beachside home, she lost her freedom and inner peace, she never re-married, she never got to bury her husband, the unnamed killers remained in Brazil controversially under full amnesty, the victims never truly got their deserving reparations, and the country still struggles to fully grapple with their violent past.
Eunice Paiva is a powerful heroine who spent her life fighting for the vulnerable, but she lived in a world of unbalanced justice. And this unbalanced justice isn’t just confined to Brazil, this sad feature applies to all the countries on the western hemisphere that fails to reckon with its past or tries to deny the unforgivable sins.
Which leads us to the United States today.
Mahmoud Khalil was illegally detained, had his literal citizenship via green card revoked, and remains in a jail in Louisiana. Why? Because he believes Palestine deserves freedom.
Khalil didn’t rob, he didn’t kill, he didn’t threaten a government official, he didn’t storm the U.S. Capitol, he didn’t defy or attack any police, he didn’t try to overturn the results of a U.S. election. Those actual crimes sound familiar, do you see where I’m going?
Khalil is instead a victim of being a target for misinformation from an administration, while lacking the power and resources to overcome the relentless and politically powerful mudslinging and present his truth. Khalil is the victim of a cult that literally thrives off of mudslinging and lying, and famously tried killing the vice president THEY elected for not going along with their bullshit narratives. His only crime was loudly protesting the ongoing genocide (which is being disputed) committed by Israel towards Palestine (the extent of his protesting is also being disputed), with Trump threatening that more of these deportations is on the way in order to supposedly rid the United States of dangerous foreign agents (which is a baseless narrative also being disputed).
As a reminder, the people in power are Bolsonaro fans, Netanyahu supporters, and admirers of greedy strongmen with selfish ambitions. The people in power today literally created the modern-day blueprint for right-wing bigots to follow while pursuing their political power. MAGA creates their own version of the truth, their own version of history, their own interpretation of the literal laws, and their own vision of what the founding fathers wanted. This cult lives in a giant bubble of misinformation and invites those who don’t necessarily enjoy the melting pot aspects of a post-Civil Rights Era America to join in on the frenzy of falsehoods.
The MAGA cult is on a journey to rewrite history, and is trying to gut the entire government to improve their chances in succeeding. Anything that had challenged Donald Trump’s interpretation of the world has been under threat this entire year; W.H.O., the Department of Education, the Justice Department, even the damn national weather service. MAGA isn’t just here to distort the truth to make it theirs, they are here to inflict pain towards those not going along with their anarchy, much like how Brazil’s military dictatorship thrived off of delivering pain and horror towards anyone they believe isn’t accepting their situation.
This wouldn’t be the first time conservatives would try to rewrite atrocities of the past in order to shape their image of what America should be----remember that all those confederate statues full of traitors, slaveowners, terrorists, and betrayers of the literal United States started springing up not immediately after the war, but in the early 20th century as the South’s resistance towards facing their sins grew to horrifying levels.
Birth of a Nation, the KKK, Jim Crow, the damn Stone Mountain memorial carving, and even the ongoing towards present day villainizing of Mexico is part of their efforts to justify, to alter events, to downplay the South’s lust for slavery and domination of minorities from Black people to Native Americans to the Mexicans and Latin Americans starting to call the U.S. home along the South. Never forget that Black people and Mexican people were the original cowboys, but White America along Texas and the Deep South would never want you to know that.
History repeats itself all the time, these movements have an ebb and flow to them, especially if they remain unchecked. Remember the United States literally hired Nazis after World War 2, therefore not killing this obscene, globally dangerous movement once and for all. Nazis being allowed to continue in the U.S. allowed the movement to gain momentum in deeper regions in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, hitting its peak when the South American dictatorships started springing up like daisies.
Fast-forward to today, where after Clinton we see the Democratic Party witnessing the rebirth of Christian nationalism that can be linked to the Confederacy and Nazism brewing out of the New Tea Party Movement in the early 2010s, but hung on to the status quo and to their greed, therefore allowing Trump to rise during the Obama years into an undeniable force. White Christianity loved Jim Crow, loved slavery, loved battling Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement, and now have pledged their full allegiance towards Donald Trump and the far-right administration committing war crimes out in Israel. Even wilder, they are willing to let the economy tank and crater if it means pleasing their orange-haired leader, and they’ll bat for him no matter what and spend years claiming that everything happening now is part of the plan.
And in the wildest turn, they’re even warming up to Vladimir Putin, who in part has doubled-down on Russia’s Orthodox Christianity as an excuse for their war crimes and their battles against Islam and “Wokeism.” But they’ll never admit that their love for Trump means they are connected to the atrocities of past fascism, because that just simply isn’t the truth according to them.
I’m Still Here isn’t just a brutal beautiful portrayal of a strong family who managed to outlive the military dictatorship that tried to destroy them, it’s a warning shot at what’s happening today.
Argentina’s president Milei is very hit-and-miss, but never forget during the campaign he downplayed the atrocities of Argentina’s military dictatorship that only fell apart after their months of lying about the Falkland War caught up to them in the most tragic way (notice the trend). Chile’s current president in 2011 had to win an election against a candidate who literally supported Pinochet, an awful man who led a ruthless dictatorship that started with the literal bombing of their capital city, and the public execution of thousands of people inside a sports arena within just the first few days. And of course, we see the likes of Bolsonaro who wants to bring back the dictatorship style of running Brazil.
Then there’s Donald Trump, who wants badly to rule like a king, a king that shall not be questioned or denied anything he wants. This is why the U.S. government is being gutted as we speak, this is why his administration is trying to rewrite the rules and regulations, this is why they are trying to dismantle federal enforcement of education entirely, and this is why the MAGA movement continues their misinformation online, through their conservative news networks, and by any other means of communication---especially podcasting.
This slippery slope of denying the past, refusal to punish the political criminals, denying dissenting voices, creating wild narratives built to pit people against each other, and willing to engage in violence to produce results they desire, this all leads to the very same kind of authoritarianism that shattered South America for generations and generations to come. This purposeful misinterpretation of history and current events will stunt an entire nation’s growth for decades. Brazil is still fighting demons from an era before computers, and it doesn’t have to be this way.
The United States doesn’t have to continue falling apart to this scummy cult. The truth must always outshine the lies, the pursuit for justice must always outweigh decisions that are made only because they are easy to implement. Otherwise, we will fall into deadly traps that will ruin entire family lines, entire cultures, entire populations within the borders of your country. It cannot be difficult to publicly admit that Trump lost in 2020 and tried stealing the election afterwards. It cannot be difficult to target the political threat and neutralize their political powers forever. It cannot be difficult to loudly and proudly call out MAGA for claiming Haitians are eating pets in a small community. It cannot be difficult to enforce the first amendment rights for everyone, including those speaking uncomfortable truths about select nations who has been given a long leash for a very long time.
I’m Still Here is a hauntingly beautiful but tragic masterclass on what happens to a country that ultimately succumbs to misinformation, succumbs to fears and lies about the unknown, and allows the worst people in a society to operate and run the region to how they see fit, whether or not the society if happy with the results.
This movie has launched the conversation of what Brazil should do related to its past, and how it should move forward to prevent the same tragedies from happening again. But this movie should be seen more within the United States and the rest of the world, because step-by-step the United States is inching closer and closer towards the very style of government that hurt Brazil so badly the scars may linger for centuries.
Worst of all, and just like the family portrayed in the film, without strong resistance you may also someday wake up to a knock on the door, and realize far too late that your happiness, health and safety moving forward will depend on what the unchecked power considers you to be.
