Brazilian filmmakers Victor Di Marco and Márcio Picoli are making their feature film debut with “London,” a character-driven drama that challenges conventional representations of disability in cinema. The project, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week program, emerged from the directors’ frustration with how disabled characters are typically portrayed on screen—often depicted as objects of pity, requiring correction, or serving as vehicles for tragic narratives.
The film centers on London, a disabled young adult employed as a dominant at a fetish establishment, who confronts an internal conflict when offered a diagnostic test for his disability. Rather than present disability as something requiring cure, the filmmakers frame it as a distinct form of intelligence and embodied experience. Di Marco, who stars in the lead role, sought to develop a physical cinematic language that reflects how his character navigates the world with particular agency and understanding.
Though comparisons to filmmaker David Cronenberg have already circulated, Di Marco and Picoli view these parallels as somewhat ironic. While Cronenberg explores reimagined and deconstructed bodies, their work examines disabled bodies within the present moment. The directors also situate their drama within contemporary anxieties surrounding medical pathologization and the pressure to label and perfect every aspect of human experience.
The filmmakers aim to transmit a crucial message through their work: disabled bodies represent the future, as aging and circumstance make disability a universal human experience eventually.
Originally reported by Variety →
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