Wednesday, March 5, 2025
I'm Still Here 2024 aka Ainda Estou Aqui
Brazil, France 
Location: SilverCity
Showtimes: 6:30 & 8:45 pm


Director: Walter Salles
Cast: Fernanda Torres, Fernanda Montenegro, Selton Mello
Running Time; 136 minutes
Language: Portuguese 


Academy Award Nominations: Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Actress (Fernanda Torres); Golden Globe Best Actress (winner): Fernanda Torres; National Board of Review: Top Five International Films; Palm Springs International Film Festival: Best Foreign Language Film. Vancouver International Film Festival: Audience Award. 39 other wins, 59 other nominations.

“Torres's deeply internalized performance exerts a magnetic appeal, pulling us into her character's unimaginable grief and loss as she fights to remain strong for her family.”—Peter Howell, Toronto Star

Based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir, “I’m Still Here” transports us to Rio de Janeiro in the early 1970s when Brazil’s dictatorship sought to exert its authority through detentions and disappearances. Salles, who also directed the Oscar-nominated “Central Station” (TIFF ’98), focuses on real life Eunice Paiva, whose terrifying experiences transformed her into an activist, lawyer, and hero.

When “I’m Still Here“ begins, life in the merrily crowded Paiva household is warm and jovial, despite the threat of spot checks and arrests that loom over every outing. All this changes when patriarch Rubens (Selton Mello), a former congressman forced to live in exile during the previous decade, is ushered away to provide a mysterious deposition to military interrogators. 

Soon after, officers come for Eunice (a superb Fernanda Torres), holding her 12 days in a windowless prison as they try to persuade her to incriminate friends and associates accused of leftwing activities. Eunice emerges from prison transformed, embarking on a journey to expose the government’s illegal activities and refusals to acknowledge their role in the disappearances of thousands of innocent citizens.

Part of what gives “I’m Still Here” its tremendous power is the way Salles and his collaborators give equal weight to the personal and the political. Eunice remains a loving and fiercely protective mother to her children, even as she pursues the courageous campaign against the dictatorship that will consume several decades of her life. This is an engrossing, deeply moving film about ordinary people who refuse to hide when the tempests of history come calling.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Small Things Like These 2024
Location: SilverCity
Showtimes: 6:30 & 8:30 pm


Director: Tm Mielants
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Emily Watson
Running Time: 98 minutes
Language: English


Berlin International Film Festival: Best Supporting Performance: Emily Watson.  5 other nominations. 


“[Murphy's] is a marvel of a performance, extremely expressive and yet deeply inward-looking.” Sheila O’Malley, rogerebert.com


Based on Claire Keegan’s novella, “Small Things Like These,” is an intimate character study, set in Ireland, 1985. (NOSFA audiences will recall Keegan as the author of “Foster,” which inspired last season’s “The Quiet Girl.”)


Cillian Murphy is Bill Furlong, a local coal and wood fuel distributor. He and his wife (Eileen Walsh) are raising five daughters. As Christmas approaches, while making a delivery to the Good Shepherd Convent, Bill witnesses a chilling sight: a distraught, screaming young woman forcibly dragged into the church by her mother and several nuns. Bill suspects she is an unwed mother.


The scene forces Bill to recall his own troubled past where he was bullied for being the son of an unwed mother. When he was young, Bill and his single mother lived on her employer’s farm. This explains his inclination towards solitude. Murphy wordlessly conveys s variety of emotions. 


However, given the influence wielded by the Catholic Church in his community, Bill is uncertain how he should react to what he saw at the convent. His conscience is further torn when he happens upon the same young woman, Sarah, freezing in a coal shed adjacent to the church.


Aware of what Bill may have witnessed, Mother Superior Sister Mary (Emily Watson) invites him for tea. A superficial cordial air is undercut by the subtle intimidation Sister Mary wields. Bill is soberly aware that she will do whatever in her power to run the convent---suspected to be one of the infamous Magdalene Laundries--and preserve her stature.  


Director Mielants and his cinematographer Frank van den Eeden do an impressive job of illustrating the dynamics of the town through detailed, authentic visual language.  


The film is further indictment of the Magdalene Laundries which unbelievably operated as late as 1996, where many unwed mothers were forced into unpaid labour, giving up their babies for adoption. ​