203: Central Station / I’m Still Here (with Gus Lanzetta)

Gus Lanzetta returns to the podcast from São Paulo to discuss two films by the Brazilian director Walter Salles: 1998’s Central Station, starring Fernanda Montenegro, and his latest, Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here) starring Montenegro’s daughter Fernanda Torres, both Academy Award-nominated for their respective performances.

In Central Station Fernanda Montenegro gave one of the greatest screen performances of the 20th Century as Dora, a retired schoolteacher running a scam writing letters for illiterate people at Rio’s train station who winds up rescuing an orphaned boy and transporting him to the far reaches of the country to try and reunite him with his long-lost father, in a film that reaches an overwhelming emotional power.

Fernanda Torres received universal acclaim in Salles’ latest film as Eunice Palva, the wife of a former leftist congressman in Rio before the coup d'état. When he is disappeared by the secret police and she is also interrogated for weeks by the state, their happy domestic life is shattered and Eunice devotes the rest of her life to social justice work and getting the state to finally admit what they did to her husband, refusing to give in to the fear, in a film that Torres has described as a “national therapy session” for a country that would wish to ignore this period in their history.

Gus and I talk about these two acting dynamos, the Tropicalia movement, Burt Lancaster, Bugs Bunny, MF DOOM, crying at the movies, and our hopes that Brazil finally wins the first Oscar for their cinema. Is it coming home?

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Follow Gus Lanzetta on Bluesky.

Listen to Gus’ podcast project that is relevant to the topic of the Brazilian dictatorship, Um Espião Silenciado (A Silenced Spy, in Portuguese)

“Fernanda Torres Has Already Won” by Seth Abramovitch, for The Hollywood Reporter, February 15, 2025

French trailer for Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998)

Brazilian trailer for Ainda Estou Aqui (Walter Salles, 2024)

International trailer for I’m Still Here (Walter Salles, 2024)

“Minha Gente” (My People), Erasmo Carlos, 1972