Walter, so many of your films concern movement, young people on the road, and notions of freedom. Here, you have this anchor in the shape of the house. How did having that unit ground the film?
Walter Salles: This film is about the interior movement of that one character, Eunice. We are talking about the story through the microcosm of a family that had a dream of a future that was severed by an authoritarian regime. Then, there was this woman who reinvented herself—the movement to do that from within is extraordinary. In Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries, you travel in distance. The transformation is in the distance, as you bump into a physical geography the character is unaware of. In I’m Still Here, it’s about this character who has to reinvent a present—and a future—for herself that she is also unaware of. They are all journeys of discovery.
Fernanda Torres: This film is also about traveling: time traveling. Walter wanted to go back to that house, which he visited so often in his childhood. It was something so personal, and I always found it beautiful that he opened that house again through cinema to invite us inside and to see that house with him.
Fernanda, how did shooting the film chronologically affect your process of embodying Eunice?
FT: There was a possibility of doing the prison scenes first, but Walter always said no. He always said, “There is no other way to make this movie but chronologically.” It’s funny, because it really helped me. The day I saw Selton saying goodbye, I looked at him and said, “I’m really going to miss my friend,” because we are friends. I felt lonely when he left. That house was such a wonderful place to shoot, to be able to go to that set in my city every day… And then, one day, it was like I was kidnapped from that place to go to this awful prison. When I returned to the house, I was a different person. To have that experience as an actress—and not only for me but all actors in the film—was like having a mirror to the experience of the characters. It helped a lot in terms of building this sense of honesty and truth in the movie.
