Yahoo Lifestyle Marcelo Gomes Steps Into Television to Tackle HIV Epidemic in Brazil With HBO’s ‘Oxygen Masks Will (Not) Drop Automatically’
Three decades into his career, lauded Brazilian director Marcelo Gomes (“Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures”) is finally stepping into television with the HBO/Max series “Oxygen Masks Will (Not) Drop Automatically.” The five-episode drama, based on the true story of a group of Brazilian flight attendants who set up a scheme to smuggle HIV treatment from the US in the 1980s, will have its first bow as part of this year’s Berlinale Series Market Selects.
Set in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1980s, “Oxygen Masks Will (not) Drop Automatically” stars Johnny Massaro (“Hidden Truths”) as Nando, a gay flight attendant who, after being diagnosed with HIV at the height of the epidemic, begins smuggling the groundbreaking treatment AZT into his home country despite the drug not being yet approved by local health authorities. Bruna Linzmeyer, who was in Berlin last year with Juliana Rojas “Cidade’ Campo,” co-stars as Nando’s best friend, Léa, dealing with not only her confidante’s diagnosis but an unexpected pregnancy resulting from an affair with a married man.
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Speaking with Variety ahead of the Berlinale, Gomes says he had been invited to direct several other series before, but they “weren’t aligned” with his interests. When the director first read the script for “Oxygen Masks Will (Not) Drop Automatically,” he immediately knew he had to join the project.
“This is a story set in Brazil at a time when we were coming out of a brutal dictatorship and ready to be happy again, to enjoy freedom and be with each other again,” he adds. “Then this epidemic comes in, with a very sexual element to it, and the conservatives rejected it terribly in Brazil. There was a horrible stigma attached to it, and I think it’s important to tell this story to Brazil and the world because every once in a while throughout history, we are faced with waves of conservatism that destroy human connection.”
Gomes believes it is important to note how “the new generation has no idea of what the HIV epidemic was” and only has an understanding of its dimension through films and television but “can’t grasp what it was like to go through it at the time.” “I knew so many people who died of HIV, so it was very emotional to me to think back to that time. We also wanted to reflect on the level of prejudice Brazil experienced in the 80s and to think about how we very recently had a government that once again promoted that way of thinking.”
“It is of great importance to be presenting a series like ours in a moment like the one we are going through politically in the world,” Gomes emphasizes. “Some days, it feels like we are back in the Middle Ages like all the progress we made in the last five decades didn’t happen. It is so, so important to show how solidarity is key to getting rights for minorities because this fight is far from over.”
This sentiment is echoed by Massaro, who tells Variety that the series “is not only a reminder of what the HIV epidemic was like but an alert: the fight isn’t over yet, as made evident by the recent US elections. The importance of a work like ours is huge because, without it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation about HIV.”
Massaro says he was first attracted to the project because of his admiration for Gomes and then due to the quality of the scripts. “A story’s potential to move me — and the potential of being the vessel to this emotion — is key to choosing any role,” he points out. The same goes for Linzmeyer, who says she believes “fiction has a beautiful potential for emotional connection with audiences” and that this series “allows us to understand sociopolitical issues faced by a still marginalized community today.”
Gomes speaks highly of working with HBO/Max in Brazil, adding that they had a “great partnership.” “They were super open to our ideas, from the sex scenes that we felt were pivotal — we couldn’t be prudish when speaking about the early days of HIV — to how we cast the series and the way we decided to shoot it, with different textures and techniques. It was an incredibly respectful, nurturing partnership, and I was very happy throughout.”
The series aesthetics mixes digital, Super 8 and 16mm to recreate the feel of the ’80s, with great care also paid to production design and music supervision. “We worked with VHS cameras that were used in the ’80s, and it generates a certain confusion on whether or not we used archival footage in the series. We haven’t. We shot it all ourselves, which I think brings great truth to the story,” points out Gomes, adding that the team also went to great lengths to recreate the interiors of ’80s planes as well as flight attendants’s uniforms.
Associate producer Ernesto Soto says it “is incredibly emotional for us to be able to be in a festival the size of Berlin with a series that is deeply Brazilian but also universal,” reiterating the team’s desire to “see the story travel internationally.”
“Because of the way we funded the project, we also have the rights to sell it to international territories outside of Latin America. It would be great to see it play on broadcasters across Europe and the rest of the world,” he adds.
The news of the series having been selected to play in Berlin came at a time when Massaro was “filled with self-doubt” and felt like “a very welcome push to continuing to believe things happen at the right time.” “I know how the Berlinale is a shop window to the world. I hope those living with HIV feel embraced and those who don’t can develop empathy and expand their understanding of what it means to live with the virus in this day and age.”
“Oxygen Masks Will (Not) Drop Automatically” is a co-production between Morena Filmes (Mariza Leão, Tiago Rezende and Thiago Pimentel) and HBO/Warner. A release date is yet to be announced.
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