Focus Expat Cinema: every Wednesday around 7PM foreign language films with English subtitles.

In 1970, Rubens Paiva was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro and never again seen alive. Walter Salles’ poignant drama reconstructs that era in painstaking detail: to show how Paiva’s family survived and fought to find out what happened to him.

Rubens Paiva’s family enjoy a relatively comfortable middle-class life, but, exasperated with the military regime that has ruled Brazil for six years, he has become involved in resistance activities. When Rubens is detained by the secret police, the Paiva family suddenly find themselves rudderless. After a short spell in detention, his wife Eunice tries to support their five children while also gleaning whatever information she can about her husband’s disappearance. But as time passes, hope of Rubens’ return fades and the family is faced with drastic changes to their hitherto idyllic existence.

Walter Salles’ (Central Station, 1998; The Motorcycle Diaries, 2004) first narrative feature in twelve years is an all-too-timely account of life under authoritarian rule. The filmmaker knew the Paiva family in his youth and the sense of intimacy he conveys, along with the ring of authenticity that permeates every moment, immerses us in this era and the minutiae of the family’s increasingly precarious existence. At the drama’s heart is Eunice – stunningly portrayed by Fernanda Torres (and in later life by Torres’ own mother, Fernanda Montenegro) – whose steely determination to seek the truth, when justice is cruelly absent, is an act of impossibly brave rebellion against the forces of oppression.