Brazil’s dark history as a military dictatorship with horrible human rights violations is exposed in the award-winning “I’m Still Here.”

A box-office smash at home, despite a concerted right-wing campaign against it, “I’m Still Here” tells one family’s tragic if ultimately heartening story. Awarded Best Screenplay at its Venice Film Festival world premiere, it is Brazil’s Oscar candidate for Best International Picture and this month Fernanda Torres won the Best Actress – Drama Golden Globe.

It was January 1971 when dissident politician Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) was arrested and never seen again. Left to raise their children is Eunice Paiva (Torres).

“Rubens was a congressman during the military coup in ‘64.” Torres began in a joint Zoom interview, noting that year was when military rule began. “He was in exile for a year and came back with the condition he wouldn’t be involved with politics anymore. He was married to my character. They had moved from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro and were living there when our movie starts.”

“Now,” Mello said, “we have this honor to portray these important Brazilians that even Brazilians didn’t know very well.

“Through the film and the book that it’s based on, a lot of people in Brazil and around the world will meet this man — and more than that, this woman who struggled her whole life searching for answers.

“Because he was not involved in the guerrilla fight. But he was helping. People would pick up letters from people who were in exile to give these letters to the families. One day, the police arrived in their house, took him to torture and kill him. He never returned, not even the body.

“So the film is about this woman with five children who is left alone after this amazing father and husband is gone.

“The film talks about how you fight against a dictatorship, an authoritarian regime. She does it, smiling.”

“She has to reinvent herself,” Torres said, “from a housewife from the ‘50s to this lawyer that defends human rights. Such an important woman — that nobody knew. Until the son Marcelo wrote this book ‘I’m Still Here,’ which the film is based on.

“Then Walter Salles shot it in a very realistic way — because Walter was one of the children who was around that house. When Walter was an adolescent, he was a friend of one of the girls, and he was introduced to the best of Brazil through that house.

“In a way, I think he did this movie to reopen that house that was suddenly closed to the world. For him, that house represented the best of Brazil.”

“I’m Still Here” opens Jan. 17