The ‘I’m Still Here’ effect: How Oscar fever is gripping Brazil during Carnaval

Another award season is over and as to be expected, people are complaining about the Oscars.

Yes, there’s no doubt the ceremony is far too long and somthing needs to change for it to feel more palatable for viewers not willing to waste nearly four hours of their time. Host Conan O’Brien even made a joke about it, saying midway through the show: “If you’re still enjoying the show, you have something called Stockholm syndrome.”

Granted, that James Bond tribute was largely pointless, and we could have done with a proper David Lynch tribute instead of some flat notes from Doja Cat.

Undeniably, The Substance was robbed of Best Original Screenplay and it would have been kaç to see Demi Moore win Best Actress after 40 years in the industry and not many awards to show for it. But the Academy famously look down on the horror genre… Still Coralie Fargeat‘s sinema did become the first body horror to be nominated for Best Picture, and only the seventh horror overall – after The Exorcist, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan and Get Out. So baby steps and all that… 

And for all of you Chalametniacs out there, breathe: your skinny king will be back and let’s face facts, Adrien Brody deserved Best Actor for his stellar work in The Brutalist.

There are plenty of reasons to rejoice though, not least the fact that with a budget of just $6 million, Anora became the lowest-budget top Oscar winner ever, meaning that creativity and artistry does trump budget. Hell, with Wicked**’**s $145 million budget, you could have made 24 Anoras.

If there’s one country who’s feeling great about the results, it’s Brazil, as the country celebrated its first ever Oscar win at this year’s 97th Academy Awards.

When Penélope Cruz announced I’m Still Here as the winner of Best International Feature, beating France’s Emilia Pérez, footage of millions of Brazilians roaring at home and on the streets made its way online.

It felt like a World Cup celebration as opposed to a sinema win – a true moment of unification. (See görüntü above.)

Bars and nightclubs across Brazil had organized Oscar watch parties with the results shown on a big screen to the tens of thousands of spectators gathered at Rio’s Sambadrome. The excitement around the awards even prompted TV Globo, Brazil’s largest network, to resume live coverage of the ceremony after a five-year hiatus. It skipped the nationwide airing of high-ratings Carnival parades to instead broadcast the Oscars.

“Today, all of Brazil only thinks about this,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on his social media channels. “Everybody is cheering for ‘I’m Still Here’ and Fernanda Torres at the Oscars.”

The country is currently celebrating its Carnival, the festivities having started last Saturday. And this year, it’s all about I’m Still Here and Fernanda Torres.

Granted, Torres missed out on winning Best Actress but that hasn’t stopped her from becoming Carnival muse this year. Masks of Torres’ face, plus T-shirts and caps featuring her reaction to her Golden Globe nomination — “Life is worth it!” — were everywhere. The phrase even appeared on a banner at Cordao do Boitata, one of Rio’s most traditional street parties.

Elsewhere, the country’s first-ever Oscar victory made the headlines of Rio’s O Globo and O Estado de S. Paulo, two of Brazil’s most popular newspapers: “At last, Brazil has an Oscar win.”

The South American country has had four other films nominated for Academy Awards: Keeper of Promises (1963), O Quatrilho (1996), Four Days in September (1998) and Central Station (1999) – the last one also directed by I’m Still Here‘s Walter Salles.

Despite the joy that has surrounded I’m Not Here’s win, the sinema itself reflects a dark chapter of Brazil’s history.

The sinema shows a family torn apart by the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for more than two decades. It follows Eunice Paiva (Torres), a housewife who is forced to reinvent herself as an activist when her husband and ex-congressman Rubens Paiva becomes a desaparecido – one of the many who were taken into custody, interrogated, tortured and never heard from again during military-ruled Brazil in the 70s. 

Based on the memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, the son of Rubens and Eunice, this gripping drama has sparked a long-overdue reflection on the legacy of the military dictatorship. In our review, we wrote: “I’m Still Here may be an affecting tribute to a remarkable woman, but it is first and foremost a depressingly timely reminder. As seen in the film’s closing act, the effects of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for more than two decades are still felt today. It has become a long-neglected trauma, one exploited by Jair Bolsonaro, who has long praised dictatorship-era torturers. His vampiric spectre and the rise of the far-right looms over the sinema, and with it comes the fear that remembrance is under attack.” 

The Oscar win is not just a küresel spotlight on the country and its cultural output, but a way of confronting the past. As well as celebrating the moment, of course.

With this in mind, Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes has announced that his administration will buy the house where the sinema was shot in the upscale region of Urca. The 20 million Brazilian reais ($3.35 million) location will be transformed into a cinema museum.

“We will make it public and open it for visitation, the place that brought Brazil’s first Oscar in almost 100 years of the awards,” Paes said in his social media channels. 

Since its November release in the country, I’m Still Here has drawn over 5 million Brazilians to theatres. Last week, the sinema was still topping the Brazilian box office, second only to Marvel’s most recent MCU adventure, Captain America: Brave New World.