DIFF 2025: Lesbian Space Princess Review | An Explosively Vibrant Odyssey Of Self-Acceptance

In Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese’s award-winning debut Lesbian Space Princess (2024), outer space becomes less a sci-fi setting and more a glittering metaphor for queer interiority. The film screened at the Dharamshala International Film Festival on October 31, 2025 and saw a houseful audience. The film balances emotional self-discovery and cosmic absurdity—an unapologetically sapphic playground where humor, heartbreak, and high camp coexist. The film bursts with innuendos, cultural winks, and a self-aware lesbian sensibility that pokes fun at heteronormative inadequacies while celebrating queer joy.

Our heroine, Saira (Shabana Azeez), is the eponymous princess of Clitopolis—an elusive utopia said to be “hard to find but actually quite easy.” The only daughter of royal mothers Anne (Madeleine Sami) and Leanne (Jordan Raskopoulos), Saira is an introverted twenty-three-year-old with self-worth issues so acute that she’s been voted “Most Boring Royal in Gay Space.” Her only claim to excitement is her relationship with Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel), a thrill-seeking space assassin who dumps her after two weeks.

Heartbroken, Saira’s emotional spiral propels her into a bizarre, neon-lit odyssey through the galaxy—a journey as much about conquering self-doubt as it is about rescuing her ex from the clutches of the hilariously literal Straight White Maliens. Along her journey, Saira is joined by the Problematic Ship (Richard Roxburgh), a sentient vessel that gleefully spouts homophobic remarks before reluctantly developing empathy, and Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran), a nonbinary musician whose optimism slices through Saira’s melancholia like a sunbeam in space dust. Together, they crash through drag queen thieves, self-doubt monsters, and emotional labyrinths, all while Saira learns that her “magic hands” (each gifted with an extra finger) aren’t her only power.

These Straight White Maliens, animated rectangular blocks of fragile masculinity, are determined to attract “chicks” with a “chick magnet,” which—true to the film’s absurdist humor—ends up covered in actual chickens. They embody a parody of incel culture, where man caves echo with the art of mansplaining and misplaced entitlement. In sharp contrast, the lesbians of Clitopolis navigate attachment overload—falling fast, loving hard, and burning out quicker than light speed. However, Lesbian Space Princess uses Saira’s insecurity as a mirror to something universal: the fear of being unlovable. It’s fascinating how the film positions this as a shared emotional crisis between men and lesbians, albeit in opposite contexts. The Straight White Maliens compensate for their lack of self-worth with arrogance and entitlement, while Saira internalizes hers through self-doubt and neediness. Both are trapped in the same orbit of insecurity, unable to believe they can be liked for who they are. That parallel gives the film a strangely empathetic edge.

Saira’s tearful awkwardness might test one’s patience, but it’s also painfully relatable. Her fear of disappointing others, of being unlovable unless needed, anchors the film’s emotional weight. Beneath the gaudy sci-fi surface, Lesbian Space Princess is a story about learning to exist without apology—a lesson tucked between bawdy jokes and camp visuals. The film’s brilliance lies in how it normalizes queerness without the “coming out” narrative; Saira’s conflict is not particularly about identity, but mostly about intimacy, self-perception, and emotional survival.

Some of the gags wobble, and the film occasionally overstuffs itself with visual noise, but its charm never wanes. The humor teeters between sharp satire and chaotic cringe, yet that inconsistency feels almost deliberate—mirroring Saira’s own emotional turbulence. The animation soars during her anxiety sequences, turning abstract feelings into tactile, visible demons. And Azeez’s voice work grounds it all, her trembling delivery balancing comedy with sincerity. Varghese’s original score collides with Hobbs’ animation background to create a mischievous, politically charged, and tender ode to the queer imagination.

In the end, Lesbian Space Princess is as messy, vibrant, and endearing as its protagonist. It’s a queer animated film that dares to be both silly and sincere, swinging between parody and poignancy without ever losing its heart. Some will find it too much; others will find themselves in it. Either way, it’s destined for cult status—a rainbow-hued reminder that in the chaos of outer space, the hardest planet to land on is self-acceptance.