The complete print of The Life of General Villa has long since been lost, which means we can never know how good Pancho Villa was at playing Pancho Villa.
Directed by Walter Salles, the veteran Brazilian filmmaker behind Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries, it spins the tale of the true-life Paiva family whose happy, middle-class existence is upended by the country’s military dictatorship.
‘I’m Still Here’ is inspired by the ‘disappearance’ of a real-life congressman in Seventies Brazil, and directed by Walter Salles, a childhood friend of the congressman’s family.
But Salles’s personal connection to the Paivas also makes the film part of a wider, more eccentric tradition in which the tale itself becomes a feedback loop, coloured by the maker’s own memory and his relationship to his characters.
History comes to the living room,” said the author Philip Roth, summing up the ideal of all historical fiction, which is to show how big events impact daily lives and real people.
