A Historic Day for Lusophone and Brazilian Film!

Yesterday was a historic day for Lusophone and Brazilian film! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science announced 2025 Oscar nominations. I’M STILL HERE (2024) became the third Brazilian production to be nominated for Best Picture. The first was KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN (1985) in 1986. I’M STILL HERE is the first nominated Best Picture contender to be entirely in Portuguese. Fernanda Torres secured the second Brazilian nomination for Best Actress. She follows in her mother Fernanda Montenegro‘s legendary footsteps, who earned nomination for her role in CENTRAL STATION (1998) in 1999. Their nominations come almost 26 years apart–the literal span of a generation. Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles directed both women. As of today, Brazil has never won the Best Picture and Best Actress Oscar categories.

The Golden Globe Awards boosted both daughter’s and mother’s Oscar chances. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association nominated Montenegro for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama in 1999. She didn’t win that award, but CENTRAL STATION took home a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film that year. The movie competed in the same siloed category at the Oscars, which it didn’t win. This year the results were reversed! While I’M STILL HERE (2024) and Fernanda Torres earned nominations for Golden Globes in the same categories as Montenegro and CENTRAL STATION, only Torres won her category.

Previously Torres ranked low in Oscar win predictions, but her Globes victory gives her momentum, and her emotional and hopeful acceptance speech could persuade Academy members. Hollywood loves a good story behind a win. How she is carrying on her mother’s legacy enriches Torres’s journey to the Oscars story. I’M STILL HERE passes the acting crown from one Fernanda to another by having Montenegro embody the elderly version of Torres’s character. Talented Torres wears the heavy crown with grace. Filmmaker Walter Salles gave the women this moment, just as he gave them movies and roles audiences will always remember.

Adding to her chances is I’M STILL HERE leaping into the the Best Picture category. The film avoided ghettoization into the Best International Feature Film category, formerly called Best Foreign Language Film. In the past, non-English language films couldn’t overcome weaker chances of even being nominated for Best Picture, let alone winning the award. PARASITE (2019) broke the language barrier to win Best Picture in 2020, a very helpful precedent for I’M STILL HERE. Then there’s the movie’s subject matter, life under a dictatorship that personally changes the heroine’s family and life trajectory. She perseveres in her fight for truth and family and what’s right despite the losses and hardships she endures. This based-on-a-true-story period picture carries heavy topicality because of current worldwide events.

Suddenly the 2025 Oscar races are more exciting for me! Through the Luso World Cinema Blogathon, I try to raise awareness of the cinematic contributions of Lusophones and their descendants. The average American doesn’t know the word Lusophone exists, its meaning, and who is one. These historic nominations turn the spotlight onto Brazil’s filmmaking. Adventurous American audiences, especially the Oscar completists, will seek out a non-English, nominated film. They will get to hear Portuguese spoken in a prestige picture. Boa sorte to Fernanda Torres, Walter Salles, and the rest of the team behind I’M STILL HERE, and obrigada for your trailblazing that led to this historic day for Lusophone and Brazilian film!