Still Missing: Salles Returns with Survivors of the Dictatorship

“The dictatorship’s mistakes was to torture but not kill,” former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro proudly claimed in a 2016 interview, referring to the military dictatorship which created a dystopic reality for the country from 1964 to 1985. It was the sort of vicious absoluteness Bolsonaro gleefully reveled in during his 2019 to 2023 reign, an outrageousness earning him the moniker “Trump of the Tropics.” It was during these years Brazilian auteur Walter Salles was developing his first narrative feature in more than a decade, an adaptation of Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 book I’m Still Here, enhancing the importance of revisiting the contemporary dark ages we’re only a generation or so removed from.…...