“You’ll see through me if I dance for you like I dance for them.”
“Then dance for you.”
Everything in Heaven, I Wanna Go There shimmers before it bruises.
Spotlights pool across skin like a fresh wound. Glitter catches in the corners of tired eyes.
Dancing, performance, attention and longing all pass from hand to hand with the same uneasy choreography. Set inside the seductive glow of a London strip club, Heaven, I Wanna Go There initially presents itself as a noir lesbian romance between two strippers working the night shift who fall in love.
Through striking cinematography, the DoP, NFTS alumni Cordelia Lawler (The Gorge, Apple TV, 2025), creates a world where desire is endlessly performed but rarely possessed, a place where looking has become a de-sensitised profession, yet being truly seen remains terrifying. Drawing from the intimacy of social realism, Heaven, I Wanna Go There finds tenderness within harsh realities.
At its core, the film is not centred on sex work itself, but on the complexity of lesbian life on screen. The contradictions, emotional labour and private battles that exist beneath the surface. The strip club becomes a fitting metaphor for a culture that prizes visibility over vulnerability, hustle over connection and external validation over self-acceptance. Desire is conveyed as transactional until it suddenly isn’t. When love enters the frame, it disrupts a carefully maintained rhythm of distraction, forcing its characters to confront the possibility that being truly seen is more frightening than being desired.
The title Heaven, I Wanna Go There carries both a prayer and a confession. It evokes a familiar queer longing: the imagined place where love becomes uncomplicated, desire exists without shame and we can finally stop apologising for who we are. Yet the film complicates this fantasy. Heaven is not a destination or an escape, it is the place that demands we look inward, confronting the fears, desires and shame we have learned to bury.
Beneath its neon-soaked noir aesthetic, Heaven, I Wanna Go There becomes a meditation on the versions of ourselves we perform to survive, and the quiet devastation that follows when genuine intimacy threatens those performances. Rather than framing lesbian romance as either tragedy or fantasy, the film embraces contradiction: queer love is shown as intoxicating, messy and at times, self-destructive. Its most powerful insight lies in its portrayal of internalised homophobia, not as an obvious external force, but as something quieter and more insidious, shaping the ways we protect ourselves from the very love we desire. Ultimately, the film suggests that the hardest journey is not reaching heaven, but believing we are worthy of entering it.
Crafted by an all-queer, all-female creative team produced by Hajer and co-written and co-directed by Nicola Frew and Priya Panchalingam, Heaven, I Wanna Go There offers a perspective that feels deeply lived-in rather than observed from the outside. Its bold visual language draws from noir while reshaping it through a distinctly queer lens, replacing voyeurism with intimacy and spectacle tangled in emotional tension.
Its cast are part of an exciting wave of emerging London talent, delivering performances that feel gritty, evocative and emotionally charged. Nicola Frew, (I Am Woman, 2020, Goalpost Pictures) who also co-wrote and co-directed the film, plays the lead role of Becca, bringing a guarded intensity to the character. Opposite her, Sienna King (Love, Death and Robots, Netflix, 2025; The Little Mermaid, Disney, 2023) delivers a nuanced performance as Alya. Their chemistry creates a palpable tension and fragile intimacy that anchors the film. Supported by an original score that captures their tenderness to the heavy bass that pulls them back into the club’s world of performance.
The film’s artistry lies in these contrasts: Becca’s slicked-back hair and gem-encrusted sheer mesh outfit embody the constructed glamour of the club, which then cuts to Alya at home, bare-faced, reflective and yearning in a baggy football shirt. These visual shifts reveal the distance between the selves they perform on stage and the vulnerable, complex young women they are beneath the roles they are expected to play.
Though Heaven, I Wanna Go There has yet to premiere on the festival circuit, it already feels like a film poised to generate conversation. Beneath its exterior lies a tender exploration of queer desire, self-sabotage and the fear of being truly known. It asks what happens when we stop chasing the attention we think we need and face the love we are afraid to accept.
Heaven, the film suggests, was never somewhere else, it was always the place we were most afraid to enter.
Stay updated with ‘Heaven, I Wanna Go There‘ on Instagram
Film Credits
Writer, Director, Becca: Nicola Frew
Writer and Director: Priya Panchalingam
Producer: Hajer
Director of Photography: Cordelia Lawler
Alya: Sienna King