Following this week’s world premiere of the hilarious animated scifi musical comedy epic Lesbian Space Princess in the Panorama section at the 75th Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, the film’s South Australian writer-director duo Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese speak exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about bringing their shared vision to the big screen.
The vibrant inter-gay-latic adventure—which is in the running for the prestigious Teddy Award—follows the introverted titular space princess, Saira (Shabana Azeez), as she is forced to leave her queer home planet of Clitopolis. Her bold mission is to save her bounty hunter ex-girlfriend, Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel), from the clutches of the forgotten incels of the future, the Straight White Maliens (Mark Samual Bonanno, Zachary Ruane, and Broden Kelly). With just 24-hours to save the love of her life, Saira encounters an array of sticky situations and memorable characters including gay-pop runaway Willow (Gemma Chua Tran), weapons expert drag diva Blade (Drag Race Down Under and Global All Star’s Kween Kong), and a problematic spaceship (Moulin Rouge’s Richard Roxburgh).
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: You had me at the title! At what point did that come to you?
Emma Hough Hobbs: “We’re from South Australia and there’s an initiative there called Film Lab: New Voices which is about accelerating the careers of diverse voices and specifically to help make a low budget feature film. I kept saying to Leela, ‘You should apply!’ We’re both filmmakers, but Leela more so than I was. I was focused on my animations, but I was already considering applying for it myself and had been approached by some guys to team up with them to potentially make something together.”
Leela Varghese: “I was like, ‘Even when I’ve got a girlfriend, there are men stealing her away from me!'”
Emma: “So I was like, ‘Well, I don’t see you pitching anything!’ Then I stormed off and had the best shower of my life. In the fog of the shower steam the words Lesbian Space Princess came to me and I ran out of the shower dripping wet, with my hair a towel, and I said, ‘Babe, I’ve got it! I’ve got the idea for us to pitch something together!” Then you said…”
Leela: “‘That’s stupid!’ But obviously she won me over in the end. So it all started with the title and then we built the movie around it.”
How would you describe the collaboration between you?
Leela: “We fill in a lot of each other’s gaps. I’m a writer and really wanted to be a writer-director in the comedy space. I also did musical comedy. Emma’s an animator and writer-director as well.”
Emma: “Before this film I did no dialogue experimental animation, so it was very different for me. When we co-wrote the script we had a week-long intensive which our producer and script supervisor were part of. That’s when the bones of the film were created very collaboratively by the four of us.”
Leela: “In terms of us collaborating, we were off doing our own thing but we always had an eye on the other person’s work and kept coming back together. Every element of the film went through both of us before it was greenlit.”
Emma: “Coming up with every scene was like a game of tennis. We were hitting the ball back and forth and we’d always try to make each other laugh. We’d be in different rooms working on the script and we’d send each other the scenes we’d been working on and then hopefully you’d hear the other person laugh and then you’d go, ‘Yes!'”
Leela: “The fact that we each had to sign off on every detail, that it was never just one person and always the two of us combined, actually made the process quite intense. Every time I had an idea or solution we had to get it approved by each other.”
I was just speaking with Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher, the writer-directors of Night Stage (Ato noturno) which is playing here at the Berlinale. Like yourselves, they are also a couple as well as being filmmaking partners. How did you go about deciding when you could and couldn’t talk about the film? Did you set any rules?
Leela: “We were actually having huge issues with that because there were no boundaries. It was chaos the whole time that we were making it! But at one point I came up with this idea to try to help. I made a box and inside there was a piece of paper that said “The Film” on it. The idea was that when we were at home we could only talk about the film if we physically walked over to the box, took the lid off and stuck that piece of paper to the wall. Then afterwards you’d have to put it back in the box and put the lid back on. That lasted for one day!”
Emma: “But that was a great day!”
Leela: “Yeah, there was always a hope that it would work!”
Emma: “We were trying to come up with all these tricks to have boundaries, but we’re both workaholics and filmmaking is problem-solving so we couldn’t help ourselves. Leela especially doesn’t switch off. Sometimes I’d be asleep and in the middle of the night Leela would wake me up and be like, ‘I’ve fixed it, I know what to do!”. I’d be half awake going, ‘That’s great babe, but can we talk about this in the morning?!”
Leela: “We were on a Teddy Award panel here at the Berlinale with the directors of Night Stage and the directors of Sirens Call, Miri Ian Gossing and Lina Sieckmann, and we realized that both those pairs of co-directors had collaborated together for a very long time. Whereas for us, this was the first time, so I’m sure that over time our collaboration process will become much clearer and more thought out. We’ve decided that we might even go to therapy for film projects!”
You talked about making each other laugh while you were writing the screenplay, how would you describe the tone of the film and the vibe of the humour?
Leela: “Campy.”
Emma: “Referential.”
Leela: “It’s quite subversive.”
Emma: “Incisive.”
Leela: “Kind of silly.”
Emma: “Yeah, even one of the characters in the film says, ‘It’s so stupid!’ Sometimes you’ve just got to lean into the comedy. Our rule for the film was comedy first.”
Leela: “It’s a playful film.”
How did you set about creating this very queer world and then contrasting it with what’s outside, like the Straight White Maliens?
Leela: “It had a lot do with the empowerment of our target audience, which is lesbians and the LGBTQIA+ community. We wanted to create some escapism. It’s an escape from reality. That’s what we always thought this film was. It’s a bit of fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. Come to the cinema, watch something out of this world and have a good time.”
Emma: “Once you flip the dynamic of today, you’ve got queer femme POC characters at the centre of the film and that identity doesn’t define them because that’s the norm in this world we’re creating. By having the reverse, we’ve got the incels of the future, who are the new marginalized community in this world. We point out the similarities of how they might be feeling and how we feel, because there are a lot of parallels between the main character and the Straight White Maliens. They both just want to get the girl, but they’ve got to realize that that’s not necessarily what they need.”
I understand that you only had a small team of animators working on the film, so what you’ve achieved is even more impressive.
Emma: “Thank you! Alice Lam and Cheyenne Maher were our two full-time animators, led by myself and Jeremy Kelly-Bakker our other technical lead, and then there were two part-time background artists, Madeleine Karutz and Anthony Robinson.”
What was your vision for the animation style and the overall visual style of the movie?
Emma: “Working with such a low budget for animation you’ve got to choose your battles wisely and we really leaned into the cartooniness of it. Someone described it as looking handmade which made me really happy. It was such a great process. Our two lead animators both specialized in different things. Cheyenne was really good at the emotional performances and the conversational articulation of the characters, so we gave her a lot of the talking scenes. Alice is insanely quick at action stuff, so a lot of the fight scenes were animated by her. It was a deeply collaborative process though. I did the production design based on the comics that I used to do in uni. It was great getting to dust them off and bring them into an animated feature film context.”
Tell me about creating your lead character, the lesbian space princess herself, Saira, who Shabana Azeez brings to life so beautifully with her voice work.
Leela: “There was a point where Kiki the destroyer could have been our lead character, but we discussed it and decided that we wanted to be more truthful to who we are as people. We’re very anxious and insecure and struggle take up space. I know that seems ironic because we’ve made this film, but the main character is a beautiful combination of our anxieties and insecurities in such a ridiculous setting that it makes it fun to explore.”
Emma: “Shabana was the natural choice for Saira because we all grew together as creatives.”
Leela: “Shabana has been in every single project I’ve ever made and she’s been in my friends’ films and in Em’s as well.”
Emma: “Yeah, Shab was also in the one live-action short that I made. When we were casting we did look at other people for Saira, but Shabana was the only person who didn’t feel like a caricature of an anxious person and it was important for it to be believable. If you go too whiny or woe is me with it, then people aren’t going to buy into it. The genuineness and authenticity of Saira was vital to us and it was great working with Shabana to bring that to the film.”
Leela: “She had the hardest job because she is surrounded by all these chaotic characters, while her character has got the more dramatic arc in the film. As with every other project we’ve done together, Shab was amazing. She’s not only captures the character brilliantly, but brings so much to it as well. Shab added a lot of nuance to Saira. She could have just been introverted and quiet, but she found ways to elevate the character. Being surrounded by such big characters, we wanted to make sure that the audience loved Saira as well. It’s tricky when you’re doing a character that’s more timid or introverted but I think we’ve pulled it off. At the end of the day, all we know is that we love the performance and we love Saira. We definitely see parts of ourselves in her and in the other characters as well.”
Willow is one of my favourite characters and the songs she sings are peppered throughout the film. I love the moment when it’s revealed that she is the one singing, as if she’s been right there “on set” all along commenting on the action.
Leela: “We’re really proud of that moment and that kind of reveal was something that I hadn’t seen done before. When people start watching the film, everyone’s like, ‘What are these songs and who’s singing them?!’ Then we find out in a really cool way. We always knew that music would be a big part of the movie. Willow is another combination of the two of us and we have such a soft spot for that character.”
Leela: “Willow is more of a younger me. I’m maybe more of a Saira now.”
Emma: “Willow injects a lot of energy into the film and they come in at the perfect time. I feel like a lot of people can relate to them. When we asked our animators, ‘Who is your favourite character to animate?’ Across the board, they all immediately said, ‘Willow!'”
Leela: “People who’ve seen the film seem to have such a connection to Willow, which is really sweet. Gemma Chua Tran who plays Willow has a soft spot for animation and I think that really shows in the voice performance. Gemma understands the world and the genre of film so well.”
Leela you wrote the lyrics for the songs, what did you want to bring to the film with the music?
Leela: “I typically do musical comedy, but these songs are—purposely—not particularly funny, although they have funny elements to them. We thought of these songs as the soundtrack of the film and they help the mood shift up and down and after some hectic scenes they offer a bit of down time, a bit of calm.”
“The songs play a really beautiful role in the way that the film moves along. They let the audience breathe and give them a chance to feel something. I love music and if we make another film we’ll absolutely do the same thing. When a film has an original soundtrack it’s always something that makes it feel so much more holistic as a vision.”
I loved Kween Kong on RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under and Global All Stars, so I was thrilled to hear her voice as weapons expert, glamazonian drag queen and trained psychologist, Blade in Lesbian Space Princess. How did you come to cast her?
Leela: “Kween is such a sweetheart and a big part of the Adelaide arts scene.”
Emma: “We adore her! She’s from Adelaide originally and I was a very big fan of hers on Drag Race.”
Leela: “I had performed musical comedy with her and she’s so friendly and lovely.”
Emma: “We knew that we could probably convince her to come play with us, so we actually wrote the character very much with her in mind.”
Leela: ‘Yeah, as soon as it became clear that Blade would be a drag queen, hers was the only voice in our heads. We were like, ‘We need to get Kween or we’re really, really screwed!’ Even the character design looked like Kween before we’d confirmed that she would do it.”
“Kween is such a generous artist. She is so kind to everyone in the community where we’re from and in the Australian arts community generally. Part of it is that she’s amazingly talented, but it’s also that you just love her and so you want to work with her so that you can spend time with her. She’s the best.”
Leela: “Kween had to go to an event after the voice record session with us, so another thing that people can visualize when they watch the film is that she was dressed head to toe in full drag when she was doing the voice work on the film! It added so much to it and made the voice recording session so much fun.”
Last question for each of you, what’s your favourite piece of LGBTQ+ culture or a person who identifies as LGBTQ+; someone or something that’s had an impact on you and resonated with you over the years?
Leela: “I didn’t really see myself in anything growing up, especially when it came to queer comedy, which is partly why we made this film. Being part of the performance community in Adelaide, where we have the Adelaide fringe festival, I’ve been inspired by other people in that scene like Kween. There’s also an amazing comedian in Adelaide, Lori Bell, who has a tiny but hilarious role in the film voicing the Tumbleweed. She was one of the first queer comedians I ever met and she’s been so influential. I love her comedy and find it so comforting and warm.”
Emma: “The first anime I ever watched was Cardcaptor Sakura and that had a big impact on me. Anime in Japan wasn’t the friendliest place for queer culture at that time, and still isn’t even now, but the creators of that wanted to make something that explored all types of love. The main character’s best friend is another girl and she’s in love with her. Her brother is in a gay relationship. In the world of that film, queer characters just exist and it’s not a big deal. As a kid it felt really subversive and as an adult I love revisiting it. When we were thinking about this film we watched a lot of Revolutionary Girl Utena.”
Leela: “Which is very gay, but not gay!”
Emma: “People have said that our film is like Steven Universe, if they said the f-word!”
By James Kleinmann
Lesbian Space Princess world premiere at the 75th Berlinale and opens in select US theaters on October 31st, 2025.