Musician Bif Naked, Pamela Carolina Martinez and Joshua Odjick are starring in Javier Badillo’s sci-fi comedy Lupe Q and the Galactic Earworms being shopped to international buyers at the Toronto Film Festival.
Martinez stars as the titular Lupe, head of a Latinx punk rock band who discovers only her piercing musical scream can stop an alien invasion. So she and her bandmates become the target of two warring alien races hellbent on destroying each other, and taking planet Earth down with them.
With the help of Lupe’s sweet, shotgun-toting Abuela, played by Wanda Ayala, Pachi (Florence Boule-Moineau) and her high-powered, socialite mom Karen (Laurence Leboeuf), the gang of misfits do all they can to save the world.
The ensemble cast for Lupe Q, which has started production in suburban Vancouver, includes Bif Naked as Buzkill DJ, Odjick, Andreas Aspergis, Lee Majdoub, Alessandro Juliani and Panta Mosleh.
Badillo penned the script for Lupe Q with Nat Marshik and for producer Spitshine Flicks, Holiday Pictures and Filmoption Productions, which will release the picture in Canada and handle rest-of-the-world sales the English and Spanish language pic at TIFF.
“Punk rock. Creepy space aliens. Young romance. It’s the underdog-buddy-comedy-space opera I’ve been waiting to write ever since I was an angsty Latin American kid shrieking into a mic and cranking my guitar amp to 11,” says Badillo, a Venezuelan-Canadian film director, writer and producer, in a statement. Lupe Q is Badillo’s second feature after Roads Of Ithriyah.
“We are proud to champion a project that centers diverse voices and speaks directly to a new generation of audiences hungry for originality and authenticity. We believe this electrifying mix of music, queer identity, and alien mayhem will resonate across borders—and we look forward to launching it globally through festivals in 2026, followed by a wide theatrical release in Canada,” Filmoption vp of distribution Isabelle Legault said in a statement.
Lupe Q is produced by Badillo, Martin Cadieux-Rouillard, Maya Cadieux-Rouillard, Michael Parker and Shan Tam. The executive producer credits on the film are shared by Paul Cadieux, Maryse Rouillard and Kelly White.