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A mother is forced to reinvent herself when her family’s life is shaken by an act of arbitrary violence during the grip of Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1971. The Brazilian Film Academy selected her for the Best International Feature Film at the 2025 Academy Awards: Martha, You Have to Help Me. My Husband is in Danger! Martha: Everyone is in Danger, Eunice.. She appears in Mais VocÃĒ: Episode 3 December 2024 (2024). A Festa do Santo Reis was written by Leo Maya and stars Tim Maya (as Mario Leonardo). One of the most internationally influential Brazilian films in recent years, I’m Still Here, which won the Best Screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar, follows the journey of the Paiva family between the arrest of their father, Rubens Paiva, and Eunice’s struggle after her husband’s disappearance. The journey is portrayed in dramatic detail. Walter Salles draws the viewer into the intimacy of this family, makes him a companion, makes him care about the fate of each of them, creates three-dimensional, real, believable characters. Fernanda Torres, a Greek heroine marked by tragedy, plays her life role with refinement, never falling into excess or caricature. The detailed set design, the lean script, the natural interpretations, the hand-picked soundtrack, the precise editing, all contribute to the director being able to convey exactly what he intended. Since I knew the story, I read the book on which the film was made, and in addition to the reports about it, I was attracted by the cinematic solutions that the director used. He manages to transform this particular story into something universal that can communicate with an audience anywhere in the world.