Fernanda Torres and Selton Mello on Oscar Contender ‘I’m Still Here’

Selton Mello and Fernanda Torres have known each other for decades. Mello had a guest arc on Torres’ Brazilian show “Normal People,” which ran from 2001-2003, before achieving massive fame as both an actor and filmmaker. He had also worked with her brother, filmmaker Cláudio Torres, and her mother, legendary actor Fernanda Montenegro — perhaps best-known to American audiences for her Oscar-nominated turn in Walter Salles’ 1998 film “Central Station.” Says Mello, “I literally feel like part of the family.” 

Now the pair are playing husband and wife Rubens and Eunice Paiva in Salles’ acclaimed drama “I’m Still Here,” based on the memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva. Paiva is a well-known writer in Brazil, and his 1982 autobiography, “Happy Old Year,” details the accident that led to him becoming a tetraplegic. That book also mentions how in 1970, when he was 11 years old, his father, Rubens, disappeared and was presumed murdered by the Brazilian military. “We knew of his father only as a headline,” says Torres. “We knew he had been tortured and killed by the military and the body was never found, but we never knew the full story.”

It wasn’t until 2015, when Paiva published “I’m Still Here,” that the world learned not only the details of his father’s disappearance, but the inspirational story of  Eunice, who also survived torture and imprisonment to start a new life with their five children and become a successful attorney and human rights advocate. “It was then I learned that not only was his father this superhero,” says Torres, “but I discovered the journey of his mother, this great heroine.”

“I’m Still Here” is very different material from Mello and Torres’ first collaboration, but the pair have earned raves for their sensitive portrayals since the film premiered in September at the Venice…