Film: I'm Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui)

Tonight, I decided on film - and the film at the top of my list looked really good; I'm Still Here is about a Brazilian woman whose husband disappeared during the military dictatorship. Based on a true story, this is receiving a lot of attention. Also showing widely - the closest to me is in the BFI. I booked it, because it had started to sell out - in fact, in the end it completely sold out. Interestingly, Movie Roadhouse London saw it on Sunday, and loved it.. if I hadn't had this booked, I'd have gone with them! And by the time I discovered I was free that day, of course I'd already booked for tonight..

I made it just in time, and had booked for the end of a row, conveniently. Now.. the difference between this and the film I saw on Sunday can be very succintly described - this director knows how to tell a story, that director didn't. For all that each is the recounting of a true story, they couldn't be more different. In this film, we get to know the characters well, we get to feel their pain.. and it is very moving.

They had a great life, you know? A large family, in a large house, by the looks of it, walking distance from Copacabana. The father, an ex-Congressman, was an engineer, on a good salary it seems - as if this house weren't enough, they had plans to build another! They had a maid, they were living the dream. We get to know them, get to appreciate them as individuals.

And then one day, some shady individuals called around and took Dad away - and he never came back. They'd sent their eldest daughter to London just before, she being of an age to get politically active, and them having friends who were emigrating there.. The scenes where the wife and eldest remaining daughter are held in a military barracks for questioning, no idea what's happening to their relatives or what the authorities are looking for, are truly chilling. Thereafter, the wife becomes a social cannon, determined, first, to fight for information about her husband, but she also takes a law degree and becomes a fierce fighter for indigenous land rights.

It's a nerve-wracking indictment of the abuse of power, and a reminder of the need for governments to be accountable - a need that will never wane. As she says in a newspaper interview - how can people just barge into your home one day and take your husband, then say they don't know where he is, and you never see him again?!

And this was a privileged family. Be warned, is the message.

I'd booked to eat at The Archduke afterwards - timed it well, for 8.30: the film finished about 8.20. I hardly needed to look at the menu - they do two things spectacularly well here: roast chicken, and beef bourgignon. Today, I fancied the chicken. (And an ice cream sundae to follow.) I did notice the menu to the side, which advertised a half-price offer on bottles of wine - and this was the last day for it! So, I had one. And as if the night wasn't already going well enough, lo, they played U2.. you'd nearly think they knew I was in..

Tomorrow - whee, more storytelling! This one is Folk Horror Night, and takes place in Folklore Hoxton, tickets through Dice - run by the Crick Crack Club, performed by Laura Sampson and Daniel Morden. Also already sold out. I've booked for The Blues Kitchen Shoreditch beforehand.

On Thursday, I've booked - because it was also selling out - for Intercepted, an interesting-sounding documentary, showing at Curzon Bloomsbury only, as far as I know, about phone calls home from Russian soldiers in the Ukraine, and intercepted by Ukrainian security forces. And then I'm back to Ireland for the weekend. Where, sorry to say, I don't think there's a single cinema option for me..