“I'm Still Here” brings Brazil's dictatorship to the surface

“Did we really do that?” Tessa Mora Lacerda asked her mother, in disbelief, as they stood outside a government office on a rainy August morning in 2019.

​​In their hands is a document they have fought for years to keep – her father's death certificate, which now correctly states the cause of death.

It read: “A violent and unnatural death caused by the state to a missing person (…) under the dictatorial regime established in 1964.”

Tessa's father, Gildo Macedo Lacerda, died under torture in 1973 at the age of 24, during the most brutal years of Brazil's military dictatorship.

Over more than two decades, at least 434 people were killed or disappeared, and thousands more were arrested and tortured, the National Truth Commission found.

Gildo and Marilos, Tessa's mother who was pregnant with her at the time, were arrested on October 22, 1973 in Salvador, Bahia, where they lived in fear of persecution.

They were part of a leftist group demanding democracy and seeking to overthrow military rule.

The dictatorship targeted opposition politicians, union leaders, students, journalists, and almost anyone who expressed opposition.

Marilus was released after interrogation and torture, but Gildo disappeared.

He is believed to have died six days after his arrest at a military facility in the nearby state of Pernambuco.

​​Former detainees told the Truth Commission that they saw Gildo in prison, being taken to an interrogation room where they would hear screaming that would keep them awake all night.

The committee also found documents indicating his arrest.

But newspapers at the time reported that he was shot in the street after a dispute with another member of his political group.

The government routinely planted false narratives in newspapers read by huge audiences in Brazil and internationally.

Gildo's original death certificate, issued after a 1995 law allowed families to request a missing persons document, left the cause of death blank.

His remains, believed to be in a mass grave with other political opponents, have not been identified.

Tessa, who never met Gildo, said her father's death was a constant presence in her life.

As she grew older, her mother gradually told her more and more about him until she was old enough to know the brutal details of how he died.

But the lack of official recognition, and the fact that the family was never able to bury him, had a profound effect on her.

“His absence and the absence of his body raised a series of questions,” Tessa told BBC News.

“When I was a kid, I thought maybe he wasn't dead. I had a fantasy that he had managed to escape, and I wasn't sure my mother knew about it.”

Now, as an adult, she said she still feels like there is something “broken” inside her

​​For many years she had nightmares, couldn't sleep in the dark, and when she became a mother, she was plagued by paranoid thoughts that something would happen to her children.

“It's as if I have a physical memory of that fear,” she said.

“People might find it strange, like something supernatural, but it's not.

“It's a shock. You're born with it.”

​​Until the age of 18, Tessa's birth certificate did not indicate that Gildo was her father, forcing the family to fight a long legal battle to prove that he was.

This made correcting her father's death certificate an even more important task.

“It's part of my duty,” she said.

“It is not just in memory of my father, but in the name of all the other people who disappeared, were killed or tortured during the dictatorship.”

In December, Brazil announced that it would correct the testimonies of all recognized victims to acknowledge the state's role in their deaths.

Until now, only a few families like Tessa's have been able to work with a special commission, which was dissolved in 2022 by the president at the time, Jair Bolsonaro, and reinstated by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2024, in order to Amend their certificates

The head of Brazil's Supreme Court, Luis Roberto Barroso, said: “It is a legitimate settling of scores with the past.”

In recent weeks, a national discussion about this violent history has been sparked after a new film by BAFTA-winning director Walter Salles brought the realities of the dictatorship to the surface.

“I'm Still Here,” based on the book of the same name by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, tells the story of the author's mother Eunice and her fight for justice after his father, former congressman Rubens Paiva, was tortured and murdered.

Eunice waited 25 years for her husband's death certificate.

She couldn't access the family bank accounts without it, and she had to rebuild her life.

She died in 2018 without knowing exactly what happened to her husband in his final hours, and without being able to bury him.

Fernanda Torres, who plays Eunice in the film, She won the Golden Globe for Best Brazilian Actress last week For her role in the film, many are hoping to see her among the Oscar nominations later this month.

She told BBC News she was a huge fan of Eunice.

“She is a woman who did not spend a single second of her life searching for recognition for herself… She wanted to acknowledge the death of her husband.

“Although the world has changed, this absence has never been remedied,” she added.

“How are you going to tell these families: Just forget it. Sweep your dead under the rug?”

Although “Still Here” is mostly set during the years of the dictatorship, it resonates deeply with Brazilians today.

Brazil is a very divided country, and its politics have become very polarized.

Recent years have seen a rise in extremist rhetoric and efforts to rewrite the narrative around the dictatorship.

In 2016, a group of protesters stormed Congress Call for a return to military rule. Three years later, he became Bolsonaro's education minister He ordered a review of history textbooksHe denied that the overthrow of the democratic government in 1964 was a coup.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain He praised the former dictatorship and held events to commemorate the coup During his time in office.

More recently, Bolsonaro and some of his closest allies They were officially accused of planning a coup After losing the 2022 presidential elections.

The former president never publicly acknowledged his defeat, and his supporters refused to accept the result. Congress, the Presidential Palace, and the Supreme Court were stormed on January 8, 2023.

Salles told the BBC that the current political situation in Brazil is one of the reasons why now is the right time to make the film.

“The exceptional thing about literature, music, cinema and the arts is that they are tools against forgetting,” he said.

Brazilians with close ties to the story described leaving cinemas in tears after watching the film.

Marta Costa, who killed her aunt Helenera in 1972, said she wanted the supply to run out.

She told the BBC: “You imagine your family having their heads covered and tortured like that.”

“When Eunice tells her story, she's telling my story too; when I tell my aunt's story, I'm telling her story too. You can't separate one from the other,” she said.

Marta is preparing a documentary about Helenera and her years of resistance, but the family still knows little about her disappearance and death. Helenera's body was also never found.

“It is a cursed legacy, because we have to keep passing the baton from generation to generation, so that we can ensure that its memory is preserved, and that history tells how it really happened.”

Now, 52 years after her murder, Helenera's family will receive a certificate acknowledging the brutal reality of her death.

Marta says its importance is invaluable.

“The day we receive this testimony, it is as if the state acknowledges its role and apologizes.

“It's the first step for us to be able to start over.”

Although the testimonies represent a step forward, Tessa and Marta say bereaved families have a long way to go in their fight for justice.

The amnesty law, which remains in place, means that none of the military officials in power at the time or those accused of torture and murder have been tried. Many have already died.

There was no official apology from the government or the army.

“Brazilian society needs to acknowledge this history so that these deaths are not in vain,” Tessa said.

“If we do not work to erase this history and acknowledge our pain, we will always be at risk of this happening again,” Marta said.

The wounds of dictatorship, as Tessa puts it, are a national trauma.

But for her, as for Marta and Eunice, it is also a deeply personal history.

“I will not stop fighting until the end of my days,” she said.

“I will bury my father.”

I'm Still Here will be released in UK cinemas on 21 February 2025