Local film Lesbian Space Princess blasts off to Berlin
South Australian animated comedy Lesbian Space Princess will premiere at the prestigious 2025 Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival), the only Australian feature film on the bill so far.
The Berlinale, held in February, is one of the “big five” international film festivals alongside Venice, Cannes, TIFF and Sundance.
Lesbian Space Princess will premiere in its Panorama program, which celebrates “daring, conventional and wild” international cinema.
In a joint statement, writer/directors Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese and producer Tom Phillips say they are “over the moon” that the film is heading to Berlinale.
“Our small, amazing local team and cast poured so much love and hard work into this project,” they say.
“Having it shown on an international stage at a festival we could only have dreamed of being part of is truly incredible.”
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The film follows anxious Princess Saira, who’s devastated when her bounty-hunter girlfriend, Kiki, suddenly breaks up with her for being too needy.
Lesbian Space Princess is the first full-length animated feature film made in SA and was born from the Film Lab: New Voices program, a low-budget feature film initiative from the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC), Adelaide Film Festival and Screen Australia.
At the 2024 Adelaide Film Festival, it sold out four preview screenings and won the Audience Award for Feature Fiction.
The Film Lab program offers three SA filmmaking teams a chance to develop their first low-budget feature script in a 12-month development program. One team is then selected to receive $600,000 in screen production grant funding and presents their film at the Adelaide Film Festival.
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SAFC’s head of production and development Leanne Saunders congratulated the trio of filmmakers and their team, saying Film Lab demonstrates its “strength as a career-launching program”.
“Film Lab: New Voices is just one of the ways in which the South Australian Film Corporation is working to grow the capability and diversity of the South Australian screen sector, through boosting and upskilling innovative new filmmaking talent,” she says.
Lesbian Space Princess is an animated comedy produced by We Made a Thing Studios.
At the 2025 Berlinale, Lesbian Space Princess will be eligible for the Panorama’s audience award for most popular feature film which is judged by the festival’s biggest audience jury as well as the Berlinale Teddy Award for LGBTQIA+ film.
Screen Australia’s Narrative Content Director Louise Gough says they’re “thrilled” to see Lesbian Space Princess selected for the international festival.
“We are incredibly proud to support projects that push boundaries and capture global attention, and Lesbian Space Princess is a fantastic showcase of what Australian talent can achieve on the world stage,” she says.
The announcement follows two other SAFC-backed productions selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival: Jimpa, starring Olivia Colman and shot in Adelaide earlier this year, and the documentary Never Get Busted! following Barry Cooper, a highly decorated Texas narcotics officer.