Erasmo Carlos is a legendary musical figure in his native Brazil and this is the closing song in the Oscar-nominated film I’m Still Here. If you’re anything like me, and half the rest of the audience, you’ll be hearing through a veil of tears.

Walter Salles’ film, initially set in 1971 when this song came out in Brazil, is a profoundly moving story and Erasmo Carlos’s song serves as a sort of coda as we process the horrors that precede it.

The movie is the true story of a Brazilian family whose idyllic life in a beachfront home in Rio is torn apart when the father is taken away from his wife and five children for “questioning” one day… and never seen again.

That’s not a spoiler; the film is about the resilience of the mother, played by Fernanda Torres in an Oscar-nominated turn – far more Oscar-worthy than Demi Moore’s but far less likely to win – as she campaigns for the truth about his disappearance; just one of many under the military dictatorship.

The music throughout the film complements the images and the narrative perfectly; there’s a marvellous scene where the young girls put on Je T’Aime (Moi Non Plus) and sing along in innocent joy as the mother remarks to a friend: “Thank goodness they don’t understand French.”

There are tunes by the legendary Caetano Veoso and there’s also, inevitably, a track by Tropicalia legends Os Mutantes (who I now discover are pronounced “Moo-tanj”), while the overall score is by the equally legendary Walter Ellis of The Bad Seeds.

But this is the tune that stayed with me long after those credits rolled and the sepia-tinted images of the family’s beachside home in Rio (and the grim corridors of the military barracks where prisoners are interrogated and tortured) have faded further.

It’s a film that couldn’t really be more topical either, with its reminder that in the not-so-distant past, simply expressing dissent could be dangerous enough to end lives.

Erasmo Carlos was a historic figure in Brazilian rock, mainly because of his creations with longtime partner Roberto Carlos (not the footballer, I’m guessing) as both songwriter and recording artist.

Both were members of Tim Maia’s band Os Sputniks in the late 50s, before joining another band called Snacks and going on to form Jovem Guarda, whose song Quero Que Tudo Vá Para O Inferno became the anthem of a whole generation (it says here).

In the late 60s he was sued for the corruption of youngsters because of his “sensual performances” and banned from performing for two years but returned in the 70s with a rock band called Companhia Brasileira De Rock. He died in 2022 at the age of 81.

The title, by the way, translates as We Must Find A Way, My Friend.