I'm still here: an essay on family and community resistance to state violence

This essay reflects on I’m Still Here, Brazil’s first Oscar-winning film, as an invitation to explore violence, memory and resistance. Writing as a Brazilian scholar shaped by both lived experience and academic activism, this essay considers three interconnected areas: how the film portrays historical state violence; how it resonates with ongoing forms of violence in Brazil; and how families and communities resist through memory work. Set against the history of Brazil’s military dictatorship and its legacies, the discussion links elements from the film to broader patterns of systemic neglect and structural abandonment that determine whose lives are valued. Rather than romanticizing resilience, the discussion focuses on how families and communities refuse erasure by creating remembrance practices that transform personal loss into collective mobilization. In dialogue with feminist thought, including Lélia Gonzalez’s work on Black Brazilian women’s resistance and Catherine Walsh’s concept of re-existence, the essay explores how families and communities preserve life and challenge invisibility. In doing so, the essay situates memory work as relational labor within families and communities, directly engaging with Community, Work & Family debates on how unpaid, intergenerational practices of care sustain social life and how remembrance itself can be a form of justice.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Community, Work and Family on 27 Oct 2025, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2025.2577684