It is not likely that you feel happy after watching an LGBTQ+ production. Amazed, inspired, heartbroken; yes. But, happy? Not so much.
It is a dangerous stereotype to only have trauma-filled Queer narratives in media. And Gabe Gabriel is here to disrupt that. Runs in the Family is an absolute masterpiece, glowing with neon and glitter, and will have you doubled over laughing, dancing and grateful for family, whether biological or not.
We start the interview slowly, asking Gabe Gabriel to tell us about the early years of his life. He smiles, instantly putting us at ease, in a way preparing us for the unbelievably generous and open interview that is to follow. Gabe tells us that he was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and moved to Cape Town when he was nine years old with his mom, dad and siblings. His relationship with his parents has always been a close one, if slightly rocky at times. Gabe married young and moved to Los Angeles with his wife for a few years before getting an amicable divorce and returning home to South Africa. It was during this time that he came out as trans to his family:
“There was a lot of change in my life all in one year… I think subconsciously I [moved home] to be close to family. I didn’t think so at the time, but now in retrospect I think I probably didn’t want to come out as trans in a city so far away from home.”
Gabe describes the day he came out to his father as one of the highlights of his life. After he told his dad he was trans, his father asked if Gabe could give him half an hour before disappearing into his study. When he came back, his father had written out a list of about twenty adjectives that, he believed, best described Gabe. After writing these words down, he told Gabe that he realised none were gendered. He said to his son, “What you are telling me has no bearing on who you are and what you do with your body is completely your thing, it has nothing to do with me, as long as you stay this person”, referring to his overflowing list of adjectives.
Gabe and his father, acclaimed South African filmmaker and director Ian Gabriel, have always been close, personally and professionally. Ian helped Gabe become a scriptwriter by asking him to first ghostwrite and later independently write scripts for his projects. A year after Gabe came out to his dad, Gabe wanted to write a story about a parent’s positive reaction to their trans kid coming out.
Gabe speaks about his father with a lightness filled with complete admiration and love. He describes him as playful, “like a kid”, and speaks to the generosity of his dad’s creative capacity. As someone who has been in the industry for a long time, Ian Gabriel is known for giving the performers and creatives around him the space and safety to play. According to Gabe, Ian allows his actors to find what they are looking for in a scene rather than forcing them to mimic his ideas. When Gabe first started working with his father, they developed a writing shorthand, with Gabe as the writer and Ian as the one coming up with the actual idea:
“That taught me and gave us a shorthand for then when we started working together more as equals – rather than a mentor-student relationship. I think it really came naturally to work together because we had done it so much. He is an incredibly generous, and I know this just sounds like 'I love my dad', which I do, but he is also known to be a generous creative. He is very encouraging and very humble and if someone is like that it leaves space for cool creative stuff to happen.”
Gabe blushes slightly after speaking about his dad in this way, his love for him palpable between us. But he goes on to strengthen his stance, saying, “Sometimes it feels corny, but I am lucky to love him so much; some dads are shit”.
Gabe’s mom, however, had more reservations when Gabe came out:
“I think I empathise because she has only ever seen trans people go through the bad stuff. That is generally what we all see. So, I don’t blame her for not wanting me to put myself in that kind of situation. She was very tense about it for a year, but did a full 180 and is now very close to me. I think the combination of my dad reacting so well and my mom having so much trouble imagining a positive life for me made me want to write something like Runs in the Family.”
Runs in the Family follows River Storm (Gabe Gabriel) and his father, Varun Chetty (Ace Bhatti), on a road trip to help his estranged mother (Diaan Lawrenson) out of an eSwatini rehab, set to the backdrop of a drag competition, whose prize money could change River’s life: It will fund his top surgery, a medical gender reassignment procedure that is performed on the chest area, particularly in the removal of breast tissue. However, when River’s drag partner cannot perform in the competition, his father must instead step into some very high heels and take their place to help River. In this, secrets are revealed, and harsh realities must be faced.
The film is, at its core, an intersectional piece discussing race, gender, trans and queer topics. On their journey, River’s close relationship with his father is revealed, as well as the South African trans experience. Despite providing a space for critical topics not usually spoken about in South African films, Runs in the Family still spotlights the fun and playful spaces that exist within marginalised communities that have been demonised in the past. It is a happy Queer film – a rarity – with fun choreography, incredible cinematography and — also seldomly seen in popular Queer media— multiple healthy, supportive relationships.
The trope of chosen family is “fundamentally a queer thing”, the actor and writer explains. When coming out can result in needing to “cut [your] losses”, a family that is not based on blood but on love and acceptance will replace those who refused to catch up. Although Gabriel has a very loving and healthy relationship with his father, he has had to leave certain relationships in the past. Gabriel says the chosen family trope was implemented more unknowingly than intentionally, but it “became bigger than I thought it would be. (…) Blood is not really what matters (…). The people who chose to go with you on this ride are your family.”
Proving its brilliance, Runs in the Family was awarded the Best South African Feature at the Durban Film Festival in 2023. However, in a massive win for South African Queer cinema and South African cinema in general, Runs in the Family has been nominated for a GLAAD award. The US accolade is the pioneering award for LGBTQ+ representation in film, TV and media. Runs in the Family was nominated for Outstanding Film and is ranked among All of Us Strangers and Nyad. The GLAAD Awards will be hosted on the 14th of March, and we will definitely be watching.
Gabe’s directorial debut was a Showmax TV film called No Hiding Here, which has been described as South Africa’s first queer romcom. Gabe loved directing, but when he got the opportunity, he was almost defeated by imposter syndrome before he even began.
“I had that thing that I think a lot of people that are socialised as women have, where I was like I am not ready yet or it would be too audacious of me to direct and so I didn’t for a long time… I have always known I wanted to direct, but I also always was like that will happen when I am ‘good enough’.”
After writing the film on assignment, Gabe was offered the director role. After some convincing from the movie’s producer, he said yes.
“I was shitting myself throughout the process but it was also really fun. The mandate was that they wanted a warm and fuzzy positive queer story. And so I was like, I can try to do that and the way I tried to do that was to make sure all my HRDs were queer and to try and focus on the process and forget about the final product a little bit. The process was really special. It was a very queer set and everyone was excited to be doing a queer film that wasn’t just about queer trauma.”
Gabe and his dad are preparing to begin filming a new movie based on a South African trans icon called Granny Lee, who lived in Johannesburg in the 80s. In 2018, Gabe was at the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles when a Canadian producer pitched him the story. He told Gabe the story of Granny Lee, an older woman who was trans and also white-passing because of Vitiligo even though she was coloured; her story crossed both race and gender lines during Apartheid. She is relatively famous within the queer generation she existed in and is in the Gala archives, but “she has never had a brilliant disco film made about her – which she deserves”. The producer told Gabe he was looking for a South African writer to write the film.
“When the project came to me, I knew I was trans, but I was not yet out as trans. So, I asked if I could write the movie. I told him I was queer and South African, but I couldn’t say 'and I am trans' yet … I started writing it in 2018 and by 2019 I was out. So, the draft kind of grew with me. As I experienced my own social and medical transition, so did the film, which I think shows in the movie now.”
They hope to start filming in Hillbrow in October, where most of Granny Lee’s life was lived. She had a house where young queer people could find refuge in if they were looking for an accepting chosen family. The film revolves around this house and the safe space she created for so many queer people at that time. Soli Philander is set to play Granny Lee, which Gabe is thrilled about:
“It was hard to find some that fit all the categories – firstly, we want it to be someone who is at least non-binary or trans feminine if not a trans woman… then also it had to be someone who had a coloured experience of Johannesburg and preferably someone of the right age. We could have found a young trans woman and aged her with make-up, but there is something that you miss when you aren’t also an elder; there is a sense of wisdom and life being lived. So Soli felt like the perfect candidate for the role and I think they’ll be great.”
Runs in the Family is a glittering, neon masterpiece, one of the first to spotlight the South African drag scene in such a fun, playful way that makes it difficult to imagine the Cape Town scene without its drag royalty, whose ranks Gabe Gabriel has joined.
Gabriel has been a spectator and fan of Drag, especially since moving back to Cape Town after his brief time in the States. “I think we have some of the best drag artists,” he says, “You see all the RuPaul’s drag race artists doing their performances there all the time, and I don’t think they have anything on our drag artists… all due respect to them, but the South African drag scene…”. He doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t need to. We all agree that our drag artists are incredible and unparalleled.
South Africa’s most famous drag queen, Manila von Teez, served as a drag consultant on the set of Runs in the Family, verifying that everything, from the script to the jargon to the wardrobe, represented drag well enough. The on-set make-up artist was also a drag queen, Gale Shepherd, who was assisted by two more drag queens, Maxine Wild and, the queen herself, Manila von Teez.
Gabe Gabriel has recently joined the South African chapter of the Royal House of Labeija. “I was a drag king before I started looking so much like a boy that it felt silly to paint on a beard”, he laughs. In watching Drag and entering the Queer scene and clubs, Gabriel, by chance, then became a “friend / uncle / cousin to the House of the Cup”, the pioneering ballroom house of South Africa, a genre of Drag that goes back to the sixties and seventies but garnered popularity in the late twentieth century in Harlem. Gabriel explains that he began “working a category of realness which is specifically for trans people about, like, performing masculinity or performing femininity (…) it is an underground movement by and for, started by trans women” and has become a beautiful space for queerness.
Although the Capetonian Drag scene is bursting with vibrancy, it's difficult to know where to start. We've got you covered. Here is a list of Gabe Gabriel's favourite South African Drag Queens:
The Queer scene is bigger and bolder, and more alive than ever in Cape Town. So book your seats for the next drag show, and while you wait, indulge in the fantastic work that is Runs in the Family. We cannot wait to see more of Gabe’s incredible work.
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