Directors Márcio Picoli and Victor Di Marco
Brazilian filmmakers Victor Di Marco and Márcio Picoli have won the 20th Queer Lion Award at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival for their feature debut, London, which had its world premiere in competition at the Venice International Film Critics’ Week.
The Brazilian film shares this year’s Queer Lion with British filmmaker Theo Rollason’s documentary Queer Edward II. The award, presented annually as a collateral prize of the Venice Film Festival, recognizes films across the festival’s different sections that feature significant LGBTQ+ themes and characters.
Set in Porto Alegre, London follows its title character (Victor Di Marco), a young disabled man who works as a dominator at a fetish club alongside his friends Luke and Lilá. When the possibility of a medical diagnosis offers him answers about his body, London is confronted with the fear that a clinical label might come to define his identity. Blending sexuality, friendship, disability, and self-determination, the film challenges conventional representations of disabled bodies on screen.
In announcing the award, the Queer Lion jury praised Di Marco and Picoli for bringing the queer body into a space of “self-determination, desire, and power,” highlighting a film in which fetish becomes play, dominance an expression of freedom, and identity is shaped through pleasure, friendship, and resistance.
The jury also drew a connection between London and the legacy of pioneering British filmmaker Derek Jarman, whose work is revisited in co-winner Queer Edward II. The jury described the two debut features as distinct works united by their courage and a queer aesthetic celebrating the body, desire, and unapologetically nonconformist sexuality.
London marks the feature directorial debut of Di Marco and Picoli, Brazilian filmmakers whose previous collaborations include the award-winning shorts Victor’s Body / O Que Pode um Corpo?, Bittersweet Power, and ZAGÊRO. Di Marco also stars in the film. The Queer Lion win caps a major Venice debut for London, one of seven features selected for the competitive section of the 41st Venice International Film Critics’ Week.
