The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film offers countries around the world an opportunity to showcase their best non-English language films, highlighting national history, culture, and lessons. In 2024, 89 countries chose one film to represent its industry through its official selection committee, and after the selection of a 15-film shortlist, only five films were nominated for the prestigious award. A defining feature between two of this year’s nominees are their family-centered social commentaries on the resistance to military dictatorships and state-led repression. Despite emerging from different continents, cultures, and contexts, these films share a similar feeling of frustration and trauma from the suffocating control by their nation’s governments.
I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) – Brazil
After a 12-year hiatus from directing, Brazilian great Walter Salless brings the highs and lows of 1970’s Rio De Janeiro back to life in I’m Still Here. The Best Picture nominee is an adaption of Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir and explores the precious family dynamic of the Paiva family, led by Marcelo’s father Congressman Rubens Paiva, his wife Eunice Paiva, and their five children. Salless’ depiction of Rio and the Paiva family supercharge the film’s clash of 1970’s Brazilian culture, European influences, and dissidence. The Paiva family and friends dance to their favorite Gal Costa and Os Mutantes records, admire the works of Jean-Luc Goddard (La Chinoise) and Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow Up), and hang by the beaches neighboring their family home. Despite the military dictatorship’s presence, the family lives a fulfilling life until secret police come to escort Congressman Paiva and Eunice for deposition questioning. The once-joyous family is abruptly thrust into the suffocating grip of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Its complete collapse is prevented by the strength and difficult choices Eunice makes throughout the story.
I’m Still Here sheds light on a horror often overlooked in media: forced disappearances and the psychological torture it enacts on the victim’s families. The story, while excellent and captivating, is enhanced by the performance of leading actress Fernanda Torres as Eunice, a matriarch who leads her four children through this time of uncertainty, adversity, and legal confrontations of her own. Despite attempts to boycott the film, its success at the Brazilian and international box offices has forced Brazil to address the trauma caused by the dictatorship. Torres has already led a successful awards season, becoming the first Brazilian actress to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Torres is the second Brazilian actress to be nominated for Best Actress, following the footsteps of her mother Fernanda Montenegro, who earned the nomination for Salless’ 1998 Central Station.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (دانهی انجیر معابد) – Iran, Germany
Acclaimed Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has a history of resisting Iranian state-censorship, often at a great personal cost,that could lead to imprisonment, flogging, and repercussions for close ones. His most recent film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig was secretly filmed in Iran despite Rasoulof’s pending criminal case and previous jail stints for “spreading propaganda against the Islamic government.” This has not deterred him, however, and in an act of defiance against the Islamic State, he wrote The Seed of the Sacred Fig in response to the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, following Amini’s murder by authorities for not wearing a hijab in public. While he was able to successfully film the movie, he was forced to escape into exile with crew members on a 28-day trek, largely on foot, to Germany to finish the film, after the Iranian authorities ordered an eight year prison sentence.
The film centers around a judge named Iman, who is a loyal servant of the Islamic State and was recently promoted to become an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. There, he is faced with severe moral dilemmas over whether to overstep the law and fast-track death sentences to those protesting the government. These daily decisions and pressure from supervisors collide with his two daughters’ shock over Amini’s murder and support of the ongoing women’s protest movement. The glue of the family, Najmeh, serves her husband, and aims to ensure their daughters understand the enormous opportunity the family received with their father’s appointment. She communicates between and withholds information from both sides and struggles with a rising dilemma of her own when trust is broken in the family after an item goes missing.
Rasoulof’s deeply personal experiences combine to represent a strong statement against the Iranian regime and its treatment of women and artists. While much of the film’s crew were able to flee the country, lead actors, Soheila Golestani (Najmeh) and Missagh Zareh (Iman) remain trapped in Iran, barred from leaving and under intense government scrutiny. At screenings and public appearances, Rasoulof brings photos of his cast as a reminder that the fight for artistic freedom in the country is far from over.
Edited By: Inesa Sargsyan