Zsazsa Zaturnnah brings home the bronze from Fantasia Film Festival

Filipino queer superhero scores Bronze Audience Award for Best Animated Feature in Montreal.

Filipino queer superhero Zsazsa Zaturnnah has added another international milestone to her growing list of achievements.

The 2D animated feature “Zsazsa Zaturnnah vs. the Amazonistas of Planet X” won the Bronze Audience Award for Best Animated Feature at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.

“Still over the MOON that Zsazsa Zaturnnah got bronze in Fantasia’s Best Animated Feature Audience Award!” the film’s official Facebook page announced, while also congratulating fellow winners “Cherry & Virgin” and “Jim Queen.”

The recognition comes just weeks after the Filipino animated film made its international debut at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France in June 2026, where it screened out of competition.

Directed by Avid Liongoren and produced by Rocketsheep Studio, the team behind “Saving Sally” and “Hayop Ka!,” the adult animated superhero romantic comedy took around six years to complete, weathering funding challenges along the way. A Kickstarter campaign helped the independent production reach the finish line.

Based on Carlo Vergara’s cult-classic 2002 graphic novel, the movie follows Ada, a shy gay beautician whose life changes after swallowing a mysterious cosmic stone. He transforms into the fabulously powerful Zsazsa Zaturnnah and is thrust into battle against the Amazonistas of Planet X.

Vergara, who created the original character, also co-wrote the screenplay with Liongoren.

The animated adaptation preserves the distinctly Filipino mix of superhero fantasy, comedy, romance, camp and queer storytelling that turned Zsazsa into a pop-culture phenomenon.

First introduced more than two decades ago, Zsazsa has since crossed multiple mediums. The graphic novel inspired the 2006 live-action movie “Zsazsa Zaturnnah Ze Moveeh” and the hugely successful stage musical “Zsazsa Zaturnnah Ze Muzikal,” which has been repeatedly restaged through the years.

Now, the heroine has found another life in animation—and another international audience.

From the pages of a Filipino graphic novel to Annecy and now an audience award at Fantasia, Zsazsa Zaturnnah continues to prove that a proudly Filipino, proudly queer superhero can fly far beyond Planet X.

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