No Hiding Here is South Africa’s first queer rom-com. It tells the story of a beloved, gay small town high school teacher who ends up offering refuge to and falling in love with a visiting celebrity pop star after accidentally upending both their careers.

It’s written and directed by Gabe Gabriel, and SCAFFOLD caught up with the creator to find out more about the film and why it’s important for queer people to tell queer stories.

SCAFFOLD: We don't often get to see queer joy explored in movies- was this a conscious goal of yours in writing and directing the film?

Gabe Gabriel: Absolutely. While the relative myriad of queer stories that centre queer trauma are often necessary and important and cathartic, we felt it vital to position queer joy front and centre in No Hiding Here instead for the sake of both queers and non-queers who watch it. We wanted to send the message that we are not only our inherent queer trauma. We also have complicated jobs and favourite shoes and eat breakfast and love music and fall in love and get our hearts broken and make mistakes and sing in the shower. And there are so many different ways of being queer as well so we very deliberately included a multitude of queer characters at different stages of their respective queer journeys as an attempt to dilute the singular narrative. And on a personal note, if I think back to both times I came out to my parents (first as lesbian, then a decade later as trans), the negativity in their reactions mostly came from fear — the main thing they knew about queerness was the trauma that can come with it and I think this is part of the problem. If they knew how much incredible joy comes with queerness, they might not have reacted the way they did each time. They might have been able to celebrate with me instead of warn me against it. And I’m sure this would be the case for quite a lot of parents of queer kids.

S: It's also very common for cishet-dominated media to hijack or co-opt queer stories- why is it important for for queer people to tell queer stories?

GG: Exactly. We’re either queer-baited or our stories are reduced to running gags or trauma porn. Which is why I was really insistent with the production company that we populate our cast and crew with as many queers as possible. When queer people get to tell our own stories from whatever angle (whether you’re doing the wardrobe or the sound or the acting or the editing, etc), there is so much more truth, nuance, and specificity to it. We can tell when the cis-hets are tokenising our experiences for hits or shock factor or popularity because the content ends up being boring, repetitive, and bad, to be frank, and most of the time it enforces harmful stereotypes that make our lives harder all round. 

S: It's almost unbelievable that it has taken this long for a queer South Africa rom-com to be released- why do you think studios/ production houses are so hesitant to develop these stories?  Are they underestimating audiences?

GG: I’m by no means an expert on this but my guess would be that studios and production houses have been reluctant for fear of backlash, which is reasonable to a degree if you look at what the team behind Inxeba (The Wound) endured. However, I think what contributed to that backlash was the style of the film and also the complex subject matter that is Xhosa Tradition. Whereas a warm and fuzzy feeling of a romcom I think would be much harder to hate so I’m not sure why studios and production houses didn’t try that sooner. Queers are so desperate for more content and representation that we will always show up in support of films that are made by us and for us so there’s a guaranteed audience there. And if No Hiding Here has taught us anything it’s that mainstream Mnet/Showmax audiences are ready for stories like this. There’s been very little negativity around the film because how could there possibly be. It’s so unthreatening. Which is not to say that we should only make unthreatening content by any means, but it is to say that I hope the powers that be realise stop undermining the masses and start pumping more cash into commercial queer content once again made by queers. Because we’ll do it better every time.

S: What's your advice for young South African queer writers and directors?

GG: Make the work no matter what it takes. Grab your other queer friends who are trying to make it in the industry and shoot stuff. Even if it’s on an iPhone (look at Tangerine! — all shot on iPhone). Even if the first one is a pile of crap. The next one will be better, and so on. Stick to your guns and you will get noticed and all the hard work you’ve done while no one was watching will pay off when the big bucks come your way and at that moment: don’t compromise on who you are or what you can do!

No Hiding Here is currently streaming on Showmax