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For mother-daughter duo Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres—“The Fernandas,” as they’re referred to in their homeland, Brazil—the rare feat of receiving a Best Actress Oscar nomination runs in the family.
With Walter Salles’s moving 1998 drama Central Station, Montenegro became the first Brazilian to ever receive an Academy Award nomination in acting. Now, her daughter Torres is the second, with the searing and intimate generational epic I’m Still Here, also directed by Salles. Together, The Fernandas join a historic short list of other Oscar-nominated mother-daughters—the likes of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern, Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis, Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson, as well as Ingrid Bergman and Conclave’s Best Supporting Actress nominee, Isabella Rossellini. “It’s like a fairy tale,” Torres tells ELLE.com about her nomination on a recent Zoom call. “In Brazil, there is this sense that my mother and I are a continuation of something; two talents that endure in time. So it’s pretty magical.”
Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres in 2022.
In I’m Still Here—also a Best Picture and Best International Feature nominee—Torres plays Eunice Paiva, a mother of five in the 1970s Brazil, whose life changes forever when the era’s dictatorship abruptly claims her loving husband, Rubens (Selton Mello), one afternoon. As it was the case with countless disappeared victims of the regime, Rubens never returns home—the implication being, he was tortured and killed by the government. Co-written by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega and based on a book by Marcelo Rubens Paiva (one of the real Paiva children, now 65), I’m Still Here traces Eunice’s life across several decades while she reinvents herself as a lawyer and activist with dignity and vigor. The film also features a short appearance by Montenegro, briefly sharing the part with her daughter as the senior Eunice.
In some ways, Torres embodies a similar spirit with Paiva, at least when it comes to being a multi-faceted intellectual who’s constantly reinvented herself throughout her career as an actress, writer, columnist, screenwriter, and podcaster. She decided to follow in her parents’ footsteps (her father, the late Fernando Torres, was also an actor) and pursue acting at a young age, responding also to something in the air with her generation. “[In Brazil], we had this Monty Python-like theater group called, Asdrúbal Trouxe o Trombone. [It was similar to] wanting to be like Michael Palin and John Cleese. They were very, very influential.”
After taking part in a variety of projects across the stage and screen well into her 20s, Torres one day decided that she wasn’t going to wait around for an invitation to take part in the arts anymore. So she took matters into her own hands, and started writing scripts. Then came some articles and a regular column at Piauí, which she calls “The New Yorker of Brazil.” Later in 2014, one of those stories became her first novel, Fim (The End), adapted into a miniseries in 2023. “I became this person who can do a lot of things. Today, I see myself as an independent artist. And when you are an independent artist, you don’t rely on invitations.”
Fast forward to today, and Torres has reached a new career peak with her Oscar nomination, through a thoughtful period piece with vast contemporary resonance. In fact, to Torres, the dystopic time I’m Still Here depicts is not unlike some of today’s fear-mongering realities. “In a world full of fear, people think it would be good to have a populist leader that tells us everything is simple. ‘You just have to kill the bad guys’ is the kind of mentality that resurges in times of fear,” Torres says. “That was the case during the Cold War. And it’s the same thing now. [So] the film has historical importance in Brazil. It reminds and teaches young people [of today] what it really means to live in this regime.”
An equally significant reason why I’m Still Here has struck a chord with the audiences? The unassuming, sophisticated, and relatable story at its core that honors matriarchal strength and unbreakable familial bonds. “They are just a normal family,” Torres remarks. “You can relate to Eunice, because the idea of a mother is a very [ageless] thing. [You] can relate to the kids, and relate to the absence of the father. The family touches pretty much [everyone].”
The lived-in details that make I’m Still Here such an urgent and stirring experience are both thanks to Paiva’s book, and the memories Salles made in the ’60s, having spent time with the Paiva family at their Rio home—an open, fluid, and beachy place, constantly full of people, art and ideas that the film lovingly portrays. “From the beginning, everything that smelled like fiction almost annoyed Walter,” Torres explains, crediting Salles’s documentarian eye and aesthetic choices that ultimately helped with her understanding of Eunice. Salles didn’t just favor furniture and clothing that felt like a magazine’s version of the ’70s—instead, he opted in for something that felt several shades more authentic. “It’s rare to achieve this level of realism. Walter shot it very simply, and [did so] on film. Each take was very precise and required a lot of concentration on the set.”
Torres on set with director Walter Salles.
The shoot was marked by a vividly supportive spirit that Torres remembers also witnessing during the making of Foreign Land (1995), her first project with Salles that she calls “a formative movie” for the director, when he found his way of filmmaking through treating collaborators as co-authors. “It’s like the kind of [work] you do with theater troupes. This was a cinema troupe; cinema made by a group of artists. I saw him repeat [that style] in Central Station, and in The Motorcycle Diaries. And I’m Still Here [shows] a very mature Walter. The film touches you because it touches you. Not because the director is telling you [how you should feel]. It’s a very honest film.”
Part of that honesty was a direct result of shooting the film chronologically, a method of working that helped Torres both with Eunice’s journey, and leading and cueing in her co-stars: several of them young and first-time actors. “Walter almost used me like the first violin,” Torres reflects. “By tuning me, he was able tune all the other actors.” Overall, the shoot was like a genuine miniature that mirrored the events the film depicts, elevating its sense of realism. “The day [Rubens] left the film was the last day Selton, my friend, would be there. So when I look at him while he’s being put in that car, of course it’s Eunice and Rubens. But it’s also me and my friend Selton. And when Eunice was taken to prison—after I came back and I looked at myself in the mirror [as Eunice], I was not the same person who left that house. So that [kind of thing] was happening all the time. Walter allowed me to experience what Eunice was experiencing.”
Selton Mello (center left) as Rubens and Torres (far right) as Eunice.
In the earlier moments of the film, Torres thought of Eunice almost as “an extra in the house,” a perfect mother and a wife not yet aware of the responsibilities she’d soon have to assume. “She starts to negotiate [her position] with the arrival of the police,” Torres explains. “It’s beautiful in a way. [Eunice insists], ‘I’m going to serve you dinner.’ So [she’s like], ‘You are not invading my house. I’m allowing you [to be here]. And you are my guests.’” In the scenes that followed, Torres navigated Eunice’s feelings and priorities in a natural progression, acknowledging the ways in which she felt betrayed, angry, fearful, but always protective of her family. “And then, [there] is a big shift where she says, ‘No more utopia.’ That’s the beautiful thing about this character. [She goes through] a long process of reinventing herself and becomes who she is because of a tragic thing, [understanding that] the violence her family was a victim of is what minorities suffer every day. And so she becomes a human rights lawyer. She is, in a way, Brazil. The history of Eunice is the history of our country.”
What’s the most significant thing Torres has learned from her mother? “First of all, to be an independent artist,” she remarks. “Choose your own material, chase your own material and decide what you’re going to do next. Do not wait.” But what she cherishes the most is a simple phrase her mom says to Torres often, which she partly used as the title of her second book: “Nanda! It’s glory, and its litany of horrors!” She adds, with a laugh, “I love the juxtaposition. And it defines this moment [in my life].”