I’m Still Here by Walter Salles
The 62nd New York Film Festival has just unveiled the lineup for Spotlight section, which includes the Mexican co-production Emilia Pérez, the Brazilian films Apocalypse in the Tropics / Apocalipse nos trópicos by Petra Costa and I’m Still Here / Ainda Estou Aqui by Walter Salles, and Maria, the latest film by Chilean director Pablo Larraín.
From the moment it introduces its titular antiheroine, a Mexican drug-cartel boss seeking gender-affirming surgery, the boldly genre-dissolving tour de force Emilia Pérez is predicated on the power of astonishing transformations. The most ambitious and exuberant film to date by French director Jacques Audiard, one of contemporary cinema’s most versatile filmmakers, this Mexican co-production is at once a darkly funny crime drama and a jaw-dropping musical, powered by a quartet of superb actors—Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz—whose fearless performances defy every expectation. Winner of the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where its four leads also shared the Best Actress prize.
In the follow-up to her Oscar-nominated documentary The Edge of Democracy, which examined Brazil’s increasingly polarized politics, director Costa dramatizes the chilling rise of the far right in her country. Apocalypse in the Tropics focuses on how the evangelical movement paved the way for the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro and continues to pose the threat of a national theocracy.
Gaining remarkable access to major figures on both sides of the extreme political divide, including fire-and-brimstone televangelist Silas Malafaia, who was Bolsonaro’s right-hand man, and Bolsonaro’s liberal predecessor and successor President Lulu da Silva, Costa provides a gripping and urgent précis on the recent tumultuous events that have put Brazil in the international spotlight while painting an unsettling portrait of democracy’s fragility.
One afternoon in 1970, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman and outspoken critic of Brazil’s newly instituted military dictatorship, was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro by government officials, told nothing more than that he must give a “deposition” to authorities, and disappeared.
Adapted from his son Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir, the overwhelming, richly realized political drama I’m Still Here from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) stays tightly wedded to the perspective of Rubens’s wife, Eunice, whose indefatigable search for the truth about her husband would stretch out for decades. Featuring a deeply affecting appearance from Fernanda Montenegro (Oscar nominee for Salles’ Central Station), I’m Still Here is a devastating true story that is exhilarating in its portrayal of human tenacity in the face of injustice.
Following his acclaimed historical biopics Jackie and Spencer, about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Diana, respectively, Chilean director Larraín has made his third entry in an unofficial trilogy about world-famous women dealing with the blinding glare of celebrity while at emotional crossroads. In an all-consuming performance at once poignant and imperious, Angelina Jolie becomes Maria Callas, the American-born, Greek opera singer whose voice and intensely dramatic life captivated millions before her death from a heart attack at the age of 53.
Set in Paris, September 1977, during the final week of her life, Maria follows the legendary soprano as she negotiates her public image and private self and reckons with the increasingly blurred boundaries between the venerated “La Divina” and the vulnerable human being Maria. Punctuated by grand operatic interludes, Maria is exquisitely shot by Ed Lachman and features a vivid supporting cast that includes Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alba Rohrwacher, Pierfrancesco Favino, and Valeria Golino.
The 62nd New York Film Festival will take place September 27-October 14 at Lincoln Center in New York City.
