"I'm Still Here", an interview with director Walter Salles

Brazilian director Walter Salles is one of the prestigious guests of the "Conversations" section of the 21st Marrakech International Film Festival, where his latest film, the magnificent "I'm Still Here" was also at the centre of a Gala Screening. The masterclass, moderated by Jean-Pierre Lavoignat, truly delightful and captivating, was illuminated by the humanistic elegance and profound gentleness of the artist as well as the genuine excitement with which he approaches every moment of the process of making movies, always hoping to be surprised and willing to take risks. Following the "Conversation" and in light of it, we met the author of the Golden Bear-, Golden Globe- and BAFTA-winning film "Central Station" (1998) to discuss the both galvanising and heartbreaking "I'm Still Here" which after its successful premiere at the last Venice Film Festival (topped by a Best Screenplay Award), won popular acclaim and broke records in his country, besides being nominated for two Golden Globes and selected as the Brazilian entry for the upcoming Oscars. Asked about the twelve years separating his last fiction film, "On the Road" (2012), from I'm Still Here, Walter Salles, whose work has often featured some form of "quest" (as he said himself at the masterclass), confides about his need to go back to documentary now and again and reflects on cinema and the times and synchronicity. The film being based on Salles' own experience of coming back to Brazil at 13 to a dictatorship, and knowing personally the wonderful family depicted in it, he describes the brutality of the contrast between the love and playfulness of this family, as well as the inherent vitality of youth and of the 70s and the implacable oppression, two opposites which were "cohabitating" at the time. He says he wanted to convey it as sensorially as possible, being that he operates in the realm of memory, both personal and collective, as his friend Marcelo Rubens Paiva does in his book Ainda Estou Aqui (2015) on the disappearance of his father Rubens Paiva, of which the film is an adaptation. Salles also praises the "emotional intelligence" of his lead actress Fernanda Torres (daughter of Fernanda Montenegro, the lead of Central Station, who appears here at the end as an older Eunice Paiva) and the way in which she embodied the resilience and determination of the character of Eunice. The Rio de Janeiro-born director points out that he specifically wanted to make the public really feel the joy, in all its textures, and share in the music and the dances of the effervescent 70s, before the fateful moment of the arrest, the better to completely steep the viewer into the shock and other overwhelming emotions felt by his characters. We also talk about melding facts and film, about the photographies of the real protagonists in the end credits, about still inhabiting a space now empty, about the choice Salles made of shooting on film...