‘Lesbian Space Princess,’ “Inter-Gay-Lactic” Tale
When writer-directors Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs — who also have, as it happens, been dating for four years now — decided to make a feature film together, the discussion of what form the movie would take quickly culminated in an argument.
“I stormed off and had a shower,” Hobbs recalls to The Hollywood Reporter. “And there, in the fog, it emerged, three words: Lesbian. Space. Princess.”
Getting its world premiere in Berlin‘s Panorama section, Lesbian Space Princess follows the daughter to the flamboyant lesbian Queens of Planet Clitopolis, the introverted Saira (voiced by Shabana Azeez), who is left devastated when her bounty-hunter girlfriend Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel) dumps her.
After Kiki is kidnapped by the forgotten incels of the future — the “Straight White Maliens” — Saira must leave the comforts of gay space to deliver their ransom: her royal labrys (the most powerful weapon known to lesbian-kind). With just a 24-hour window to get her labrys and save Kiki, Princess Saira embarks on an “inter-gay-lactic” journey of self-discovery.
Kiki, voiced by Bernie Van Tiel, is a bounty hunter in ‘Lesbian Space Princess.’
© We Made A Thing Studios/Berlin Film Festival
The animated comedy is exactly how it sounds: fun, fruity and fueled by a wickedly smart script. Influenced by traditional rom-coms like Legally Blonde, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, adult cartoons Invader Zim, YOLO: Crystal Fantasy and “heaps of anime,” Varghese’s original music and Hobbs’ background in animation unite to create a cheeky, politically sharp yet emotion-packed sci-fi romp for the queer community and beyond.
“A big thing was that we were just trying to make each other laugh,” Hobbs says of the writing process. “We’d be working in separate rooms and we’d send it to the other person, and then you’d hear them laugh in the other room.” Varghese adds: “I don’t think we could have made a good script if we didn’t have that accountability with each other.”
Lesbian Space Princess is part of a low-budget initiative in South Australia, platforming the next generation of underrepresented voices in the film industry. It earned its preview screening at Adelaide Film Festival, but Varghese and Hobbs are now more than ready to show their project to the rest of the world. “As an Australian, I feel very awkward that anything I’ve made could be successful or popular,” Varghese says of the film’s reverberations in the queer film community so far. “It’s just surreal to me to think that something that came out of our brains could have that effect on people.” Hobbs adds: “We’re a little bit geeky, and I feel like we made a film that we craved to have growing up as well.”
The pair started on this project all the way back in 2021, their drive kept alive by a perfectly relatable protagonist in Saira. “A woman of color who is anxious — in many ways, she captures our own struggles with confidence and taking up space,” Varghese says. But making it a sci-fi adventure is really what allowed the filmmakers to get as imaginative as possible, Hobbs tells THR: “It’s the best genre. We could create a feminist utopia and subvert real-world politics.”
“It’s escapism for the queer audience and people of color,” adds Varghese. “Emma has a great rule — don’t make an animation that could have been a live-action film … [At first], I thought it was so silly. ‘We’re not making something called Lesbian Space Princess.’ And then we were like, ‘Actually, maybe we should do this?’ ”
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