An Oscar frontrunner is based on a true story – but whose truth is it?

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Directed by Walter Salles, the veteran Brazilian filmmaker behind Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries, it spins the tale of the true-life Paiva family whose happy, middle-class existence is upended by the country’s military dictatorship. Salles’s proximity to the material, though, enables him to add crucial texture to the bald case study, showing the ways by which state- Brazil’s two decades of military rule are still recent enough that the period remains a live issue, not yet put to bed. As such, I’m Still Here is a South American political drama that takes its place alongside Marco Bechis’s Argentinian-set Garage Olimpo or Pablo Larrain’s Tony Manero, a pitch-black satire of daily life in Pinochet-era Chile. Walter Salles directs Fernanda Torres on the set of the Oscar-nominated ‘I’m Still Here’ Close-marking your subject brings obvious benefits.