South Australia animated comedy feature film Lesbian Space Princess has been selected to premiere at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).
The film, directed and written by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, is the first full-length animated feature made in South Australia.
It is also the second feature to come out of the low budget feature film initiative, Film Lab: New Voices, which is backed by the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC), Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) and Screen Australia.
Hough Hobbs, Varghese and producer Tom Phillips said the film wouldn’t exist without the support of those three screen bodies.
“Our small, amazing local team and cast poured so much love and hard work into this project,” they said in a statement. “Having it shown on an international stage at a festival we could only have dreamed of being part of is truly incredible.”
The film will be shown in Berlinale’s Panorama section, which celebrates innovative and daring international cinema, where it will compete for the Panorama Audience Award and the Berlinale Teddy Award for LGBTQIA+ film.
Other SAFC-supported films that have recently been selected for the Berlinale include Talk to Me from SA’s Danny and Michael Philippou; Ivan Sen’s Limbo; The Survival of Kindness from director Rolf de Heer and SA producer Julie Byrne (which won the FIPRESCI Jury Prize); and Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black) from SA director Derik Lynch, co-directed, co-written and produced by Matthew Thorne of Other Pictures (which won both the Silver Bear Jury Prize and the Teddy Award for short film).