Lesbian Space Princess is pushing local film boundaries. She’s not alone

Through sapphic sci-fi, body horror and period drama, young queer filmmakers have been forging their own path outside the mainstream Australian industry. An upcoming clutch of local films embody the spirit of the community’s outsider pioneers. Fiercely independent and unafraid to push boundaries, they offer a celebration of queer young adult life that ingeniously reframes real-world anxieties.

Adelaide-based writer-directors (and real-life couple) Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese say their award-winning animated film, Lesbian Space Princess, came from a desire to speak to an audience just like them.

“From a personal point of view, I was feeling so underserviced by [local] content,” says Hough Hobbs. “Very few people are making it.”

The film is finally touching down in local cinemas this month after voyaging across the international constellation of film festivals, beginning with its Berlinale premiere in February.

The film features phosphorescent alien planets, spaceship acrobatics and royal destinies to be fulfilled. A trio of interstellar incels voiced by Aunty Donna – the Straight White Maliens – comprise the film’s scum and villainy. But within its familiar space-opera trappings lies an eclectic collision of genres, in which a hunt for moon crystals can morph into a googly-eyed meet-cute and a musical performance in one breathless sweep.

It’s a dazzlingly ambitious feature debut for Hough Hobbs and Varghese, who realised its galactic scope on a budget of less than $1 million. In Berlin, it won the coveted Teddy Award – the world’s oldest queer film award.

Within the local industry, it is also the first of its kind: a queer, culturally diverse feature animation aimed at a Gen Z audience.

“What made Lesbian Space Princess such a singular vision from both of us is the intimacy in which it was created,” Hough Hobbs says.

“We felt so vulnerable at every step along the way,” adds Varghese. For all the challenges posed by the constraints of a grassroots production, it couldn’t have been brought to life any other way.

“We were basically in a shoebox with a team of six animators, background artists and compositors, making what we wanted to make; it’s like the parents were away,” says Hough Hobbs.

At the heart of the film’s genre mashup is a coming-of-age tale about grappling with anxiety and self-worth; “write what you know,” Hough Hobbs jokes.

Shabana Azeez, Varghese’s regular comedic collaborator (and breakout star of the hit HBO hospital drama The Pitt), brings a nervy energy to protagonist Saira, the half-Indian heir to the royal lesbian throne of Planet Clitopolis. On her 23rd birthday, she’s mercilessly dumped by her bounty-hunter girlfriend Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel) – apparently, creating a photo album only two weeks into dating is “smothering” behaviour – but is given a shot at redemption when the Maliens kidnap her devastatingly cool ex.

Hough Hobbs describes the film as a “unique combination of both our priorities” sprung from her animation expertise and Varghese’s background in comedy. The pair studied the production methodologies of anime, western cartoons and indie features for their 50-week production.

Compromises had to be made across the board, particularly in the complexity of movement and the detail of each character design – as Hough Hobbs quips, “it’s like taking the worst of both worlds”.

Both agreed, as Varghese puts it, “that what slows down a lot of animation is that perfectionism”.

“That’s the beauty of this methodology. The story has to be good, and then you can find cheeky magical ways of telling that story in a really cost-effective way…. It’s less about the art being 100 per cent perfect.”

A similar ethos can be found in the work of Alice Maio Mackay who, at 21, already has six horror features to her name. The experience has taught her to stretch the possibilities of tightly limited funding that she compares to the “catering budget” of other films. In return, she has what she describes as “amazing” creative freedom.

Maio Mackay is currently touring the festival circuit with her dark supernatural romance The Serpent’s Skin, which will premiere in Australia later this year. Her film centres on Anna (Alexandra McVicker), an early 20s trans woman with latent mystical powers who becomes involved with Gen (Avalon Fast), a similarly gifted tattoo artist harbouring her own demons.

Maio Mackay takes an emotionally grounded approach to a genre that’s informed by her own experiences as a young queer person, characterising her work as “hangout films with supernatural elements”, drawing on teen fantasy programs such as Charmed and Buffy.

“As I grow and make more films, I always come back to horror; I’m interested in the different ways it can play with aspects of transness,” she says. Citing its history as a genre that’s provided a voice to marginalised groups, she describes horror as “a way for creators to tell stories that are accessible to audiences while challenging them”.

“It can be easier to play with those darker elements, rather than [staying within] the real world, which is sometimes scarier.” The supernatural tropes of The Serpent’s Skin also became a way to elevate its central romance – “to show that queer love is literally magic”.

For Hough Hobbs, the embrace of science fiction in Lesbian Space Princess came from a similar desire to “subvert the real world” and feature queer and trans characters who weren’t “defined by their struggles… so that they can just be characters”.

“The whole thing with our world is that minorities have a lot of power,” Varghese says. “That was something genre allowed us to do that you couldn’t do in a grounded drama.”

Sydney-based filmmaker Celeste Diep – whose short film Happy New Year, Ms. Luna won two awards at Cannes’ Emerging Filmmaker Showcase this year – worries that, without ample local support, “it’s no longer enough to just be a queer story; queer filmmakers can find themselves having to introduce genre elements” in order for projects to be greenlit.

“If you get pigeonholed in Australia as a queer filmmaker, that can give funding bodies the view that maybe you’re not battled-hardened enough to write stories for the mainstream – which is where you get funding.”

Diep’s own filmmaking journey involved several years with Marvel Studios, where she crewed on the productions of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). Halfway through working on Furiosa (2024), she dropped out to compete in Queer Screen’s Pitch Off event at the Mardi Gras Film Festival for the chance at securing $10,000 in funding.

“I realised ... that my stories were more important to me,” she says.

It was a risk that paid off. Happy New Year, Ms. Luna is the story of a young transfeminine woman who comes out to her extended family on Chinese New Year. It paved the way for mentorship from revered Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul in Mexico – a “spiritual experience” that taught her that she didn’t need “all these bells and whistles to make a good film”. Her subsequent short, Interview with a Hero, an introspective period drama depicting the echoes of genocide among the Cambodian diaspora, screened at this year’s Sydney and Melbourne film festivals.

“There’s a lot of excitement around queer filmmakers,” Diep says. “It’s well-resourced at the bottom end. But beyond that, you need to make your own way, somehow.”

Maio Mackay stresses that “there isn’t necessarily one way to do things,” but notes that “making opportunities instead of waiting for government funding” has led to local and international opportunities she wouldn’t have received otherwise, particularly creative collaborations with other leading trans filmmakers. Her last two films were edited by Vera Drew, the director of cult phenomenon The People’s Joker (2024); recently, she shadowed Jane Schoenbrun on the set of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, their follow-up to last year’s I Saw the TV Glow.

“It’s a really scary time” for queer people everywhere, Varghese acknowledges. “Our hope for the future… is that we can all hold on to each other as a community. As long as we do that, we can still move forward, because there’s a huge audience for this content.”

Lesbian Space Princess is in cinemas from September 11.

Must-see movies, interviews and all the latest from the world of film delivered to your inbox. Sign up for our Screening Room newsletter.