'Kiss Me in the Backseat' for Valentine's Day

'Kiss Me in the Backseat' for Valentine's Day

By Andrew Nguyen
Feb 14, 2024

What's better than celebrating love? Especially queer love? For Valentine's Day, PAPER thought it'd be cute to do just that with a short film called "Kiss Me in the Backseat" by Eva Zar, a New York based director and photographer whose work centers around intimate moments and soft interactions.

For "Kiss Me In The Backseat," Zar hoped to capture pure, unfiltered, queer, innocent, young love. When she first listened to Romy's "loveher," she got major goosebumps from the verse: "It's not that I'm not proud in the company of strangers, it's just that some things are for us." To capture the feeling of when two people are in their own little universe, Zar shot on the southwest coast of Cape Town, South Africa — a more isolated spot at "the end of the world" that feels like its own sanctuary.

"The best gift we can give queer young women is a space to feel confident and secure in their own skin," Zar tells PAPER. "For my cast, Rose and Christelle, it was essential to have a set that embraced softness and vulnerability, especially given the storyline. When we see softness and vulnerability as strengths and not weaknesses, magic happens."

Watch the short film, below.

Photography: Eva Zar