By Variety | Created at 2025-01-06 05:36:49 | Updated at 2025-01-07 17:57:09
1 day ago
“I’m Still Here” star Fernanda Torres won her first Golden Globe, and cemented her place in the awards race, after scoring the statue for best actress in a motion picture, drama.
Torres, 59, appeared stunned to hear her named called and kept her speech short. She was nominated against Pamela Anderson (“The Last Showgirl”), Angelina Jolie (“Maria”), Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”), Tilda Swinton (“The Room Next Door”) and Kate Winslet (“Lee”) and was not expected to prevail against all those A-listers and icons. In the political drama, Torres plays Eunice Paiva, a grieving mother who is coping with the forced disappearance of her husband, former leftist politician Rubens Paiva, during during Brazil’s military dictatorship.
“My god, I didn’t prepare anything because I was late already,” Torres admitted from the stage at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. “And this is such an amazing year for female performances. There are so many actresses here who I admire so much.”
She becomes the first Brazilian actress to win the award for best actress in a motion picture, drama. Her victory seemed to be especially meaningful because her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, was previously nominated in the same category in 1999 for “Central Station,” which also earned her an Oscar nod. Montenegro, now 95, appears in “I’m Still Here” as the older version of Eunice.
“She was here 25 years ago, and this is proof that art can endure through life, even in difficult moments like this,” Torres said of her win. She added that “I’m Still Here” is a film “that can helps us to think how to survive in tough times.”
“I’m Still Here” premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the best screenplay award. Since then, it’s been named as one of the top five international films by the National Board of Review and received another Globe nomination for best foreign language film. “I’m Still Here” was also selected as Brazil’s Oscar entry for best international feature film.
Torres didn’t specify on stage what she meant by “tough times.” However, “I’m Still Here’s” filmmakers have said that the movie’s story resonates differently after the Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S. and the 2023 riots in Brazil where supporters of right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazilian government buildings over his false claims of election fraud.
“We started this project thinking that we were retelling a story from the past, but we came to realize that it was also a reflection on our present,” director Walter Salles told Variety before the film’s theatrical release. “We have to remind ourselves of what happened. Cinema can be a powerful instrument to push against those forces — to help us avoid oblivion. A country without memory is a country without a future.”
