Starring Fernanda Torres and centring on a family torn apart by Brazil's military dictatorship, I'm Still Here is up for three major awards – and could pull off an upset on the night.

When the Oscar nominations were announced, the surprising strength of Walter Salles's I'm Still Here – with nods for Fernanda Torres as best actress, best international film and most unexpected of all best picture – caused celebrations in Brazil. "I'm so proud! Kisses to Fernanda Torres and Walter Salles," the country's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, posted on X. Emotionally powerful and eloquent, the film tells the real-life story of a family living under Brazil's two-decade military dictatorship, which ended in 1985. In 1971, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello), a former congressman, was taken by military police and never seen again, leaving his wife, Eunice (Torres), to create a future for herself and her five children. In the following years, as Eunice returns to school and becomes a prominent human rights lawyer, she never stops trying to find the truth about her husband's fate and to hold the state accountable. And on the day the nominations were announced, 23 January, the film and reality intersected again. Paiva's death certificate, which had declared him missing, was amended to reflect the reality that his death was "violent, caused by the Brazilian state".

I'm Still Here is an Oscar dark horse and much more. It now looks like the frontrunner in the international category, and Torres has at least a realistic chance of upsetting the best actress frontrunner, Demi Moore. Behind those nominations is an alchemical mix of the personal, the political and the artistic. Few films have depicted the devastating effects of politics on individuals in such an intimate, visceral or timely way, arriving at a moment when the rise of authoritarianism has become a global concern.

"I was always tempted by filmic narratives in which the journey of the characters somehow blends with the journey of a country," Salles tells the BBC. And while the film is explicitly about the Brazilian dictatorship, and has been a big commercial hit in that country – becoming the highest-grossing homegrown film there since the pandemic – it has also touched audiences around the world. Its global box-office numbers are remarkable for a low-budget film: more than $25m, including more than $3m in just a month in the US, where it is still playing strongly in cinemas.

The film's awards journey has been propelled by its impact in Brazil, where Torres is a major star with an enormous social media following. Isabela Boscov, a Brazilian journalist and film critic, tells the BBC: "What is really unusual in Brazil is a film that is not a comedy having that sort of box office. That hasn't happened in years and years." She attributes the success to a combination of factors, including Torres's popularity, how realistically the film........

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