Private Project

Lupe Q and the Galactic Corn Cake

When Lupe gets stuck in space, she uses her abuela's cooking lessons to kick alien butt.

The last thing Lupe wants right now is to get cooking lessons from her abuela. She has enough with her music skills - notorious for shattering stuff with her epic punk rock loudness. But Abuela Josefina has the final word - her wisdom may save Lupe’s life, sooner or later. So when Lupe and her band are stuck battling a monstrous creature in outer space, as one is bound to eventually, Abuela's lessons finally remind Lupe that connecting to her Latin roots is important, and punk rock is more than just loud music.

  • Javier Badillo
    Director
    Roads of Ithriyah, Baba, Coco Blue
  • Javier Badillo
    Writer
    Roads of Ithriyah, Baba, Coco Blue
  • Nat Marshik
    Writer
    Lupe Q and the Galactic Earworms, Roads of Ithriyah
  • Javier Badillo
    Producer
    Roads of Ithriyah, Baba, Coco Blue
  • Josh Farnworth
    Producer
    Jonah, Fraggle Rock, The Last of Us
  • Sofia Skates
    Key Cast
    "Lupe Q"
    Balestra
  • Magda Ochoa
    Key Cast
    "Abuela Josefina"
    Cuello
  • Sophia Chapdelaine
    Key Cast
    "Pachi"
    Marry Go Round
  • Tristan Miura
    Key Cast
    "Toro"
    Happy Ever After
  • Andy Brown
    Cinematography
    Bucketheads, The Revenant
  • Marco Bossow
    Cinematography
    Bucketheads, Dragged Across Concrete
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Lupe Q y la Arepa Galactica
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Sci-Fi, Action, Comedy, Music
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    October 30, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    18,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Country of Filming:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    RED
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.39:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • FilmQuest 2023
    Provo, Utah
    United States
    October 31, 2023
    World Premiere
    Nomination, Best Micro Short
  • Vancouver Island International Short Film Festival 2024
    Nanaimo
    Canada
    March 23, 2024
    Canadian Premiere
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Javier Badillo

JAVIER BADILLO (Director, Writer, Producer)
Javier Badillo is a Leo nominated, Venezuelan-Canadian writer, director and producer. After a career as a musician and 2D animator, Javier found a natural fit in independent film. Since 2008, his short films have been selected and won awards at numerous festivals including Chicago Children’s Film Festival, Cinéfest Sudbury, Flickers' Rhode Island, and Reelworld, among many others.

In 2022, Javier released his first feature film, the war drama ROADS OF ITHRIYAH, receiving five Leo Award nominations including best picture, best directing and best script, winning for best sound. It was nominated as Best Canadian Film at RIFFA.

Javier is currently working on his second film, the sci-fi action comedy LUPE Q AND THE GALACTIC EARWORMS. The script received Telefilm Production Funding, and was selected into the Blood in the Snow Development Lab, placed Top-20 at FilmQuest and Top-10 at Mammoth Lakes, and was selected into the Moviemaker Magazine production program.

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NAT MARSHIK (Writer, Associate Producer)
Born and raised in North Vancouver, BC, Nat holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from McGill University, where she majored in Gender Studies, and a Fine Arts Diploma from Langara College.

From 2010 to 2016, Nat was active in Vancouver’s poetry and creative writing communities, producing the poetry chapbooks riverveins, Outlines, and Face to the Wind, and the short memoir MILK IT! She was awarded the poetry mentorship prize by Plenitude Queer Literary Magazine in 2014, and in 2016 her queer short memoir, The Rabbit, was a finalist for Room Magazine’s creative non-fiction prize.

In 2020, her short screenplay THE LANTERN (co-written with Javier Badillo) was a finalist for the Reel Work Filmmaking Initiative script competition (BIPOC TV & Film Toronto). In 2021, her feature comedy screenplay LUPE Q AND THE GALACTIC EARWORMS (co-written with Javier Badillo) received development funding from Telefilm Canada and CreativeBC, and was one of 12 projects selected for the inaugural Blood in the Snow Genre Development Lab in Toronto. By day, Nat provides professional bookkeeping services to arts & environmental non-profits.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Punk rock. Disenfranchised BIPOC teens. Creepy space aliens. Queer young romance. It’s the underdog-buddy-comedy-space opera I’ve been waiting to tell ever since I was an angsty Latin American kid shrieking into a mic and cranking my guitar amp to 11.

In the late nineties, as a Venezuelan teen coming of age in Southeast Asia, I had already grown up on four continents, uprooted into a cornucopia of places and cultures. I developed an abiding fascination with faraway worlds--and an intimate knowledge of the power of DIY punk culture to build bridges across language and cultures. When I fell in love with filmmaking it was just a matter of time before I mixed punk rock into my own films.

One last thing. To me, characters make the movie. And I’ve always loved movies where the characters are thrown into unbelievable adventures. The one thing that was missing in those amazing stories I watched growing up: diversity of representation, including my own Latin identity. Now that I create the characters that populate my films, it’s where my work begins.