Letter to Fernanda Torres: an Oscar for democracy

In a world where the extreme right is advancing, where disinformation has become a legitimate instrument of power and civic space is shrinking, “I’m still here” is a declaration of love for resistance and the construction of democracy by each one of us.

By touring cities abroad for the film’s premiere, you and Walter Salles are sending a powerful message to the world that, in a democracy, amnesty is not the path to social peace. Criminals are alive, as is impunity. One of the torturers received 26 medals throughout his military career. The other was awarded the Peacemaker Medal. Together, those responsible for those acts cost the public coffers more than 1 million reais per year in pensions.

In each session that serves as a kind of antidote to the authoritarian wave, you are confronting 21st century populists, charlatans, and peddlers of illusion by asserting that democracy is still here. And we will fight for it.

The resistance is Eunice’s insistence on ensuring that, in front of the photographer, everyone is smiling. Something unbearable for authoritarian movements.

Resistance is our uncompromising duty of memory, including as a tribute to those who lost it.

I write to you, therefore, just to leave my modest thanks, in the form of a letter. And to say that, looking from here, I see how you transformed the book by dear Marcelo Rubens Paiva into a universal plot of freedom, that word “that the human dream feeds, there is no one who explains it, and there is no one who does not understand”.