Márcio Picoli and Victor Di Marco Talk Queer BDSM Drama ‘London’

As they worked on their long-gestating first feature, “London,” Brazilian filmmakers ​Victor Di Marco and Márcio Picoli dove headfirst into cinematic portrayals of disability. What they found was frustrating: often infantilized and overreliant characters in condescending stories that looked at disability as “punishment” or something that “needed fixing.”

Their Venice Critics’ Week character study sets out to defy all of these dated and offensive notions. 

The film follows Di Marco’s titular character, a disabled young adult who works as a dominant at a fetish house. When London is offered the chance of getting a diagnosis for his disability through a new imaging test, he faces an unexpected dilemma: he craves answers but fears a diagnosis will reduce his identity to a clinical label. Watch an exclusive teaser below.

Speaking with Variety ahead of the film’s world premiere in Venice, Picoli says he and partner Di Marco have been working on the script for “London” for many years. The duo started working on the idea before directing any of their award-winning short films, understanding that they needed to “get experience in the industry but also find our voices as filmmakers” before “jumping headfirst into a feature.”

“‘London’ is a project that stands in direct dialogue with a central theme in our career, which is questioning the way disabled people are seen in society as bodies to be fixed,” he adds. “This is something that has always bothered us. We began building this character from this discomfort, with London seeing his disability as a positive and being someone who wants to understand his body while being afraid of being reduced to a diagnosis.”

Di Marco echoes this thought, saying the duo wondered “whether we could build a cinematic language that revolved around seeing disability as a particular kind of intelligence and existing.” “I wanted to create a physical language on screen, too, where my body had this particular intelligence and way of living in this world that belonged to me only,” he adds.

Before it even began making the festival rounds, “London” has already been compared to the work of Canadian auteur David Cronenberg, which the filmmaking duo sees as an “honor.”

“I like hearing the film being compared to Cronenberg because we also feel like it’s an anti-Cronenberg, in a way,” says Picoli. “You have a character taking objects that are used for one thing and using them for something else, playing with notions of adaptation, and navigating the world around him through this exploration of the meaning of objects.”

“I also always wanted to make a classic melodrama,” points out Di Marco. “I was drawn to the idea of a disabled person being at the centre of a melodrama. As Márcio was saying, we echo Cronenberg, but coming from the opposite direction. Cronenberg is fascinated by a body that is taken apart and reimagined. The body of the future. London is looking at the disabled body in the now.” 

On the subject of now, Picoli adds that “London” also speaks to a “current” moment in society “where we are facing extreme pathologizing.” “We always have something to correct on our bodies. London having to deal with the anxiety of his diagnosis speaks to this madness we are experiencing where everything needs to be labelled and perfected.”

Di Marco chimes in to say he wants to send a “key” message with the film and the touring of the film itself: “Disabled bodies are the bodies of the future. If everything goes well in our lives and we get to live until we’re old, we will all face some level of disability. Accessibility is something that concerns all of us.”

“I wanted to cause a friction in the audience,” he adds. “I wanted them to think: this could happen to me. I, too, can be confronted by a diagnosis I may or may not wish to face. What kind of desires and pleasures would I find in such a complicated place? Desire is a very open thing; it is uncontrollable, it doesn’t respond to how we might want to label it. ‘London’ is, in a way, a love letter to the world and a way of asking for more courage out of us to embrace our desires and silence our ghosts and our fears.”

Getting an ambitious project like “London” off the ground was no easy feat. “We couldn’t get international co-producers, and we only managed to secure state funds,” says Picoli. “We couldn’t secure federal funds or any major partners, so it felt like it was us against the world.”

“Very few people can get to places like Venice, and the majority comes from a certain level of privilege, of knowing people who can help,” he adds. “As much as it is a moment of celebration, it is also an alert to the realities of a system that is still not equipped to deal with creative potencies that don’t have contacts in the industry.”

Di Marco adds that the duo “knocked on the door of several production companies in Brazil” and kept hearing that the “film was too risky, that the market wasn’t ready for a story like it, that we should try again in a few years.” “We also had several people reduce the film to ‘a disability story,’ and put it in this little box.” 

“I want to reiterate that this is a historic film and I feel the weight of this responsibility,” says the multihyphenate. “I know how many people I inspired, as well as how many have inspired me and are coming with me to Venice through the film. I feel very moved at seeing we have a place within our national audiovisual industry, and that we will continue to carve more and more of a space both at home and internationally. We are living a moment of new wisdom, and are facing it with both our feet on the ground to understand how we can tell more stories in the future.”

“London” is produced by ​Proa & Popa Produções in co-production with ​Balde de Tinta Produções. The Open Reel handles international sales.