I'm Still Here Interview: Walter Salles, Fernanda Torres & Selton Mello

[Music] what's up everyone welcome back to the collider interview Studio at if 2024 at the cinema center brought to you by the Range Rover Sport I am so lucky to be sitting with the team behind I'm still here what a phenomenal accomplishment I I can't say this enough huge congratulations on your film thank you thank you so much as we say in Portuguese I would try to I would try to repeat that myself but can't say anything like that as pretty as you just did um clearly I know about your film but because it is

on the film festival circuit our audience might not know about I'm still here just yet so would you mind doing the honors and giving a brief synopsis so we are with a family uh we are in 1970 in Brazil a very unique family um their house is open um you know to the street there friends everywhere and as the country is undergoing a military dictatorship I think that to live to listen to music to exchange ideas was a form of resistance for that family so we are with that family and then then a certain moment

something happens and the whole situation shifts and the film becomes a film about the reinvention of the mother of that family um and it's an extraordinary celebration of the human Spirit of one's capacity not to bend and and to confront something that seems to be larger than you but perhaps isn't um and it was um really a labor of love that we did for seven years you feel it while you're watching this so I did want to ask you about the weight between your last uh film as a feature fiction director and uh this one

here I think it was it's 12 years why the long wait and why particularly the return to that with this story at this particular time too well first I love to drift documentaries in between fiction films so I did a few documentaries in between and then the pandemic came and and then something really important uh we're from Brazil and uh for four years we had a regime that didn't allow for Cinema to exist so we had four years of Silence uh so these would be the first part of the answer but I think that the

most important one is that it takes time to find a story that um was so moving for us as this one you know it it takes time to find something that is as special that you want to embrace it uh and completely forget that life exists just it was an an extraordinary emmersion for all of us I'm going to get into how special and just just the weight of the story too now Walter I will start with you on that particular topic because you you wanted you want to do the true Avent justice but you're

also adapting it to a film and as fans of your work we want to see your eye bring this story to screen your way so what space Did you find in the true story that made you think I have a unique way to bring this to screen well you know I had the luck and the privilege to meet that family so I was in that house and I what there remember from it was the extraordinary Vitality of it so I I didn't want just with the help of incredible actors just to reenact the life of

those characters I wanted to invite The Spectator to be part of that family and to sense what they were sensing with the same urgency as they were feeling so I think that the camera is very organic to that kind of life that bubbles in there um and then once Destiny um you know shifts everything um I also wanted you to feel the longing for the one person that would be missed in that family so the film is all constructed uh in between those two moments you know moment of complete light and joy you know and

then uh the fact that we're missing somebody so U you know I really wanted to relay the sense of of um how how do we deal with absence and and and how can we reinvent itself and then that changed completely the the film grammar that we used and we worked chronologically we worked um in film in 35 mil um because it was really important to get the texture of the time um we wanted to bring the improvisational quality of super rate family films in it so so that was uh an incredible injection of Life uh

in the narrative and and you know we had actors that really reinvented that story every single day it was a set um in which at every end of the day it felt that we were reaching something new something that transcended what we were looking for for and that's a very rare little miracle you know so we went from little miracle to the next oh I love that I've so much I want to follow up on right now I'll I'll start with my first question for Walter but repurpose it for both of you again great weight

to this material and I have to imagine it's intimidating and it can be challenging to find the confidence in yourself that you are the right artist to bring these people to screen so is there a particular moment in preper on set when you felt that in yourself perfect that was it when V invited me I said my God I cannot disappoint him her Marcelo because this a story based in a in a book that the story of Marcelo who is a young boy in the movie and one day he he writes their own story because

I knew we all knew about Hub been spa and what happened but not in details and this woman was always hidden in in a way because she never felt the the need to be recognized by what she was and what she did and it took like many years for her son to write a book where he says the the real heroine of the family is her that stayed in silence and I mean it's a revolutionary this woman and in a very private way so all of these and to do not act in cliches you see

to do not do the crying scenes and the melodrama scenes of trying to really reach a a real emotion something honest when I saw the movie for the first time I said we all look so honest this is really rare and I think we we got there because vter created this real house sometimes I tell him it's the document M it's not even a movie at the end when you see the P the real pictures you don't feel like you feel like you saw those people and this is Walter's way of doing I mean so

it was one year under her skin I mean with her under my skin and very powerful I'm so glad you're able to recognize that quality in your own film too I always wonder as the artist making it can can you like see what we feel and see while taking yourself out of the experience of having made it if that makes any sense so the fact that you enjoy it I felt it as anator and also now only now I understand we're talking about it isn't it is there a better metaphor for cin I mean you

were young and this house just closed the doors closed the window the windows and it took you a lifetime to reopen it and project it to to was it's the projection of your own memory this is this is Cinema so it's a special movie a beautiful answer well it's beautiful to this part of the the process it's interesting because you start to talk about what you did and which is the basis of therapy too and then you start to realize new new levels of what you did and um a big fan of vter and and

and it's so touching I'm a filmmaker too and and I learn a lot as a director too in this process and because to be simple is the highest level of um you know form of expression and and this is what vter this is what wter did with this film it's you know what I mean you understand what I mean right oh yeah I think that's it I think I I I make make myself clear your point right you know because to be simple it's so hard and you have to be a a real master to

do that I'll follow up on that briefly while trying to remember my other followup question I is there anything you saw him do that you kind of want to backpocket and now take to your next film like a particular technique or strategy he uses to direct his actors I well yes I learn a lot I don't know how to use this new tools that I got from vter but at the end of the day is humanity and and what you know what what is so beautiful it's what he takes off I'm I'm I'm it's marvelous

when I watch the film I was first terrifying because I did the sunny part of the the film so when I watched the film it was a a great audience because then I saw her suffering the process and the the fight for justice Etc it was heartbreaking to watch but uh uh on cinematic way I saw too W what vter take it off you know and and he was just like it's full of prec it's a it's very pre precise this is the word is the word very precise very delicate I mean the whole films

that he did but it's beautiful what what what he he got here it's I mean I'm an actor of the film and a big fan of the film I love that I I feel like that's all I ever want to hear from artists who pour significant portions of their lives into making these films so happy I remembered to follow up on this because you were bringing up the fact that you know there was opportunity to kind of improv and and find magic in the moments on set so for each of you can you recall a

Time on set when you know something changed in a way you didn't expect taking it from script to screen so many moments I don't know I remember because we shot the happy part of the family and it was really happy it was like as I said the documentary because they are all our friends and we love that family the children and one day the windows were closed and he as an actress I I started to think my God that I'm really missing him s to my friends I'm really missing the sun in this house so

this chronological way of shooting I I get there is one scene with a girl girl at the end of the the when they are moving from the house to change cities to go to S Paulo this young girl is was her first movie years old nine years old and I know the feeling I mean the when I did my first movie the last day of shooting when you realized that that over it's like you want to keep it at the same time you you you had that huge experience it's another universe and suddenly it's over

and she was SE looking I mean to the house people removing the furniture and it was her and it was the same time the character so it happened a lot in the movie so it was that girl that the first time had the actress experience that was seeing the whole thing vanishes and it was also Al the character so it's full of this in the movie Young Ensemble here is exceptional I mean it goes back to how you were describing things before just like so incredibly raw and honest and immediately makes me feel like everything

about their like their existence in the moment but also their history as a family is real and full and I appreciated that you know there's there's something that has to do also with the fact that for all of us it was not about just reenacting characters is what it it really was um about allowing life to uh surface you know and capture those moments of Truth somehow you know uh it was not about reenactment but it it was about being able to live in the logic of those characters you know and this is what allowed

us to improvise this is what allowed us to um allow the young actors to embrace lines and and tell them in a different form because there was such comfort in in this livingness this fact of being there n you know so this is what I would love to do um um is really to somehow relay the the sensation I was I had the luck to live with that family to be in that family for when I was 13 years old and I somehow wanted to um invite The Spectator to go through the same experience how

how was it to be in that family in which to live was a form of resistance in an oppressive society and and how is it to be part of that family when something abrupt and violent and and Alters um the the whole existence of that family and and obliges everyone in in that family to redefine itself so it it it was really F about that it was in this sense very different from Central Station which came from an original sto you know U story that I I had um or the Motorcycle Diaries which was based

on on the book this was also based on the book but it was blended with a personal experience the fact that I had been in the house that was brought back to life you know and somehow um you don't Direct in the same manner somehow you're not uh informed by the same um just purely I would say uh con conceptual ideas there's something that comes in a really subjective Manner and somehow Finds Its way in the on you know on the screen um it it's hard even to to uh describe this by words because it

transcends it but it's somehow you know I believe that uh a lot of what we live in in in a film uh reaches somehow is on the neeg prints it's there on the screen um and it reaches that in a non-verbal Manner and and um a lot of what we did has to do with that I think that's a really great way to put it I think about it the time like sitting in the seat asking people like like explain art explain how you make your art and it feels like it could be so difficult

to put those into words but so many of the things that you are all saying right now it's it's almost like you are pulling the words from my head in terms of how I process the movie while experiencing it so makes all the sense in the world and it's very effective I wanted to make sure to touch on your long-standing collaboration together and also just because in general in this uh business I love forcing long time collaborators to give each other flowers so you've worked together before but is there anything you saw the other do

on this set that made even you go my God I knew you were talented but I never realized you were capable of that you want to start we did the movie of of our youth foreign lands was like a young movie he was doing stunts with me driving cars with me were young who went to Africa just to do one shot in Cape uh GRE Cape ver Islands we're really young you see and that was the most so young that the film even uh didn't make it to the Tiff at that point that's it and

V I think in that movie realized how he liked what kind of director he was he said I want um a small team like a documentary and I want to be free I don't want to have so he was founded in that film I was that film was I think when I started to think I could write because after that I wrote books I write articles in newspapers and I became a writer I think there because he called Daniela Thomas who is also in this movie as a fixer I say she's like a Associated producer

Daniela worked with me in theater and she co-directed foreign land with vter vter took Daniela from the theater and she wrote the script with the actors we started to be a family in that movie so we are young and then I never thought I would we did another movie later but it was not as important as foreign lands and then I thought I would never meet him again I mean and I was doing so much comedy on television that I thought I have seen too much that I would never go back I mean to him

and when he he invited me I was like are you sure vter and then this is our film of our maturity I think me as an actress him as a director I mean there is nothing pushy in this movie not in acting not in directing and we again were puls were very close and mature it's very moving very moving I love to be back and it's still beautiful yeah I think that this is um a film about family you know above all but made by a you know a a Cinema a film family you know

um with Fernanda we had this incredible you know initial experience um a film shot in a very you know in free form um we reinvented that film every single day and Fernanda I call her coauthor of the film because that one I accept you accept right not this one at the end end of that film uh you know just before shooting the very last scene Fernand was listening to music just to get in the mood of the of the last scene and and it was a very dramatic scene because um her uh companion in the

film had been shot and was in between life and death and she's driving to try to bring him to where he wanted to go and um originally we had three pages of three pages of screenplay and Fernando was singing this and then suddenly it dawned me that the song should be the end you know she should sing to him um and so we completely altered we we threw away screenwriters shouldn't hear that but we threw away three pages of uh of uh you know the screenplay that we had written so that was okay and we

completely reinvented that end in this film um the story was this film now that we did and I'm still here we we didn't go in that direction but in the opposite we we tried to work to find the essence of every single scene you know um Jean luk Godard the French extra extraordinary director who had great sentence es for everything he says that Cinema is about subtraction is how much you can find really the essential quality of every single scene and Fernanda uh truly captured that and sulon as well I have to say in in

uh every scene you there's no trick you know there's there's there's just the essence of the scene so they both elevated the film to a level that I I thought it should have but I never um Dre dreamt that it could be at that level you know uh so yes you're you're co-authors of the film because you went beyond what I could have you know thought that we would would be and and just to to to to to give my note on that was a fun fact or moving fact that I was young too and

I was in New York maybe 96 96 96 and I was there it was my first trip out of Brazil so full of dream uh I mean living this experience to know a new culture and then I I saw in the newspaper that foreign land is on maybe Angelica Cinema probably maybe in an art house very special thing and then and then I went there bought my ticket by myself and then I watch foreign land in New York alone and I was like wow what a beautiful film what a great meditation on my country what

a great cinematic experience I mean I I I wish someday I want to work with these guys I'm you here you are a tiff with again like really like next level work here and also just as someone who interviews non-stop in this business brings me the greatest joy just just like feel your enthusiasm for the material and the thing you created and I very much have that feeling right now here so thank you so much for sharing some of your experience with us and huge congratulations again and I'm still here thanks so much we're so

honored to be here really thank you great with us and then I got to tell you you you you're a true copio and you managed this interview in in a very beautiful way I just Lov this conversation it was special different thank you very much my heart I appreciate you saying that thank you so much thank you [Music]