by Helen Barlow
On Tuesday night, the audience went ballistic at the world premiere of the South Australian 2D animated feature Lesbian Space Princess in Berlin’s Urania cinema as part of the Berlinale’s Panorama programme.
Young queer people I spoke to and those asking questions at the Q&A said it was as if the movie was made for them.
The film’s South Australian directors, Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, said the film’s story of a lonely young woman was indeed drawing on their own experiences before they became a couple four years ago.
“Emma and I are dating, and we decided that together we make one confident person to direct a feature film,” the outgoing and very funny Varghese said in her introduction. “We put so much of ourselves into the film and it’s a beautiful combination of us, our anxieties, insecurities and struggles with getting girls. We hope that queer people and people of colour here tonight feel seen. For the next 86 minutes you rule the gaylaxy.”
The film follows the retiring and naïve Saira, voiced by Shabana Azeez from the Australian film Birdeater and currently appearing in the HBO series The Pitt. Saira is the daughter of lesbian royals, who rule the planet of Clitopolis, a place which as noted in the film, is hard to find. She’s in love with bounty hunter Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel), who does not share her passion, though Kiki [above] ultimately needs her help when she is kidnapped by three box-like Straight White Maliens, the ocker villains of the piece, whose expressions are cleverly animated and they get a lot of laughs. So, Saira travels to the other end of the universe to rescue her. Saira finally meets goth singer-musician Willow (Gemma Chua Tran) and finds the first real friend she has ever had.
Varghese noted that the “indie, indie film was handmade and animated by a very small and very passionate team.” She thanked the South Australian Screen Corporation, Screen Australia and the Adelaide Festival Investment Fund and said the film wouldn’t have happened without the film’s two straight white male producers, Tom Phillips and Jeremy Kelly-Bakker, who were in Berlin. “They were the first people to believe in the film. It celebrates what can happen when we choose to come together to make shit happen.”
The reviews have been coming in. While Screen International notes that the film could be a crowd-pleaser, The Hollywood Reporter cites it as a Berlin hidden gem: “Lesbian Space Princess Tells a Tale of “Inter-Gay-Lactic” Self-Discovery”.
Below are some interesting and funny moments from the Q&A
How did you come up with these funny things, and what was that process like between you?
Leela Varghese: “There was a lot of sharing and back and forth. Emma has a great way of describing this.”
Emma Hough Hobbs: “We would work on scenes separately and then kind of exchange them. We were working in the same house and when we heard the other person laughing in the other room, we’d be like, ‘yes’. That’s a good way to start a comedy. We both also come from different backgrounds.”
Can you also explain how you came together to create this story?
LV: “Through fucking, we came together. We both really wanted to have that up in our career, and we obviously both think each other is amazing and we’d admired each other’s talents. Emma’s an amazing animator, and I did comedy and writer- directing, and we decided to help each other get that leg up.”
EHH: “Yeah, get the best of both worlds. Give a hand to each other.”
Another thing that I always find super interesting about animation is that you’ve created these characters, you’ve written these scripts, you’ve made the drawings, the images of who you want, but then how do you match the voices to the actors?
LV: “We had a spreadsheet and a dream. It was like a scouting process rather than a call out. There’s actually a very beloved Australian cast. [Richard Roxburgh wryly voices the spaceship.] So, we were fans of a lot of them, and we scouted them. Actually, Gemma who plays Willow had heard about the story and the script and asked their agent to ask if they could audition. So, they kind of came to us. Shabana quite literally is like an Adelaide darling. In every short film I’ve made, Shabana has been the lead, and Emma’s also made short films with Shabana, so we’ve just kind of grown together. Shabana’s voice was like the only one that could pull it off.”
EHH: “To be fair, we did audition other people. But then at the end of the day, Shabana was the only person who didn’t do a caricature of an anxious person. It was like Saira needed to be authentically anxious in a way that was unlovable. Which is actually quite a step away from Shabana. Shabana doesn’t sound like Saira to me at all, but she nailed it; she found that performance as she always does. She is an amazing actor.”
How was it for you, Shabana Azeez, when you got this script after knowing each other for a while? Did you know they were working on this?
Shabana Azeez: “Yes, they’re like my favourite friends; we’ve done everything together for so long. They’d developed this script for ages, and it’s a very competitive funding round —funding rounds, plural. It’s a very special project and everybody rallied behind it.”
LV: “Actually, Shabana was at the development read through, so she had been associated with the project from very early on, before it was even definitely getting made.”
EHH: “The first character design drawing I did was literally just Shabana in cartoons.”
Tom, how was it that you, a straight white malien, came to the project?
Tom Phillips: “It was a couple of beers at the pub, pitching a few concepts. And they had a few good ideas. But with this one, they did sort of warn me that it was just a title. ‘We don’t have a concept, but it’s called Lesbian Space Princess, and it’s a 2D animated feature’. Knowing Emma and Leela and how that could work, that was always going to be the one. And now we’re here three years later.”
LV: “No one has ever been so certain about the idea as Tom. It’s like when you can have somebody who can help you believe in yourself, who perhaps is in a position of power where people will believe in you, and then you can help those people believe in us. So, it’s a beautiful thing.”
Is there going to be a sequel?
LV: “That’s a really good question. I think there’s potential for, like, a very geeky spin-off or a Willow spin-off. If not, we’re going to keep making very similarly hugely gay films.”
When it comes to main characters who are from minorities, like women of colour or queer, they’re often portrayed as very charismatic and strong, and they don’t come with flaws. What made you decide to have a more flawed central character?
LV: “Yes, it’s interesting. Originally, the conversations were about having more of Kiki as like a main character. But then we realised, we were falling into a trap of perhaps telling a story we thought we had to tell, rather than a story that was authentic to us and like who we are. And then we were like, ‘who are we?’ We’re anxious and insecure and bad at getting girls. And so, we decided to pivot in that way.”
EHH: “We just didn’t want to make a female version of a masculine story. We wanted to be true to ourselves, in the hope that other people feel seen.”
I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t give Saira any community at all. So why was she just alone?
LV: “It’s about the idea of self-love and learning to love yourself, regardless of needing the validation of a relationship. I think with Saira, we were saying that being a queer person doesn’t always mean you fit into a queer environment. We wanted to show that it’s possible that you can feel out of place, even in a place where you should feel like you belong. There’s a Hannah Gadsby quote, ‘Where do all the quiet gays go?’ And that was at the forefront when we wrote it.”
Lesbian Space Princess will release in 2025
