My Name is Priscilla — Yours With Sparkle, Sapphira

When I first stepped onto the Croisette in 2019, I was not yet the woman I am today. My real name is Priscilla, a name I once considered distant from myself but have come to wear like the crescent of an aura. In a way it is symbolic of the Australian film Priscilla, Queen of the Desert — that zany, contemporary anthem of self-actualisation. And like that memorable bus traversing through the Aussie wilderness, my own journey as Sapphira — burlesque artist, author, and conjuror of the self — has been equally adventurous.

My first visit in 2019, I saw Cannes like a vision woven in tangible form at the invitation of one of the film industry’s greatest, Steve Ravic of Majestic Films. As I watched my first screening of Beyond The Canvas, about my good friend and collaborator, Charles Billich, I was moved to tears. Cinema has the power to move us all. Each year I have returned, I shed another skin.

In 2025, that mission has become a resounding vibrancy — purposeful, exceptionally pure in tone, and now I find it truly mine. I’ve realised a truth. That I’ve never waited to be given a platform. I’ve built my message based on creating opportunities if they were not there already. Burlesque, you see, has always been more than fishnets and frills. It’s a path. An invitation.

Burlesque or Bust, my book, too, has evolved alongside me.

Now, as I stand once again in Cannes in 2025, I do so not just as Sapphira, but as Priscilla – I am truly honoured to be honouring the artists that have inspired me on this journey, the freedom fighters, the renegades.

Thank you to Majestic Films for your invitation to the festival once again, to be immersed, even if for a fleeting one-night stand in the brilliance, the royalty and breath of hope that is cinema.

I am excited for the future.

And excited to witness the evolution of everyone’s rite of passage from stage to screen, pen to paper and indeed, papyrus to pixel.