“Shooting a sex scene with your mum directing is just like … I don’t even know what the word is,” jokes Aud Mason-Hyde.
The non-binary actor is talking about working on Jimpa, the latest film by their mother, acclaimed director Sophie Hyde.
Exploring the “messy, strange, wonderful” nature of people and their relationships and sexuality is not unusual for Sophie.
Sophie Hyde is one of Australia’s most successful film directors. (Instagram: @audmasonhyde)
Her 2022 release Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Oscar-winner Emma Thompson, told the story of a sexually repressed middle-aged woman and her liberating relationship with a sex worker.
But Jimpa is much more personal. Not only did Sophie direct her own child in a role based on themselves, but it’s a film that loosely reflects the life of Sophie’s father, Jim Hyde, who the family affectionately called Jimpa.
Olivia Colman (as Hannah) and John Lithgow (as Jim) star alongside Aud (Frances) in Jimpa. (Supplied: Mark De Blok, Kismet)
The privilege of starring in their first feature film and telling a story so closely linked to their own family is not lost on 20-year-old Aud, even if the sex scene was a tad confronting.
“It kind of felt like a gift to be able to hold all of the truth of my family, all the memories of my family and all of my actual lived experience with my family, and also bring a new story to life,” Aud tells Australian Story.
Jimpa was Aud’s feature film debut. (Instagram: @audmasonhyde)
Aud’s grandfather Jim was a gay man who came out to his wife Christine in the late 1970s and went on to play a pivotal role in the gay rights movement, helping to navigate the community through the devastating AIDS epidemic.
Sophie had long been interested in writing a film about her father and the desire grew stronger after his death in 2018.
Writing Jimpa helped Sophie Hyde process grief around her father’s death. (Australian Story: Tom Hancock)
But as Sophie started to chip away at the idea, Aud was becoming more public about being non-binary and was beginning to follow in their grandfather’s footsteps as a lobbyist and advocate.
“As Aud started to explore who they were in the world, I thought, ‘Gosh, this really reminds me of my dad’,” Sophie says.
“I so wish that they could speak to each other. I wish that my dad could give Aud some advice about how it is to be this way. It was my own exploration of parenting, I suppose, that kind of led to [the film].”
Watch Sophie Hyde’s Australian Story episode ‘Out in the Open’ Monday at 8:00pm (AEDT) on ABCTV and ABC iview.
Dropping shame and living ‘out loud’
Olivia Colman (right) and Aud Mason-Hyde in a scene from Jimpa. (Supplied: Mark De Blok, Kismet)
Jimpa is an intergenerational story about family, parenting and queerness and Sophie’s most autobiographical work since her award-winning debut feature film 52 Tuesdays.
To add to the family theme, Sophie’s husband and Aud’s dad, Bryan Mason, edited the film, which stars big name actors Olivia Colman and John Lithgow.
For Sophie, the release of Jimpa in Australia this week will be the final step in a long process of being completely open about her family and the hurdles it has overcome.
Jim Hyde came out as gay when his daughters were young. (Supplied: Sophie Hyde)
“The more you make something a secret, the more shameful it is,” Sophie says. “The great thing, I think, about the choices that my family made was to not stay inside those secrets.
“Living with that out loud is much, much easier.”
Jimpa was a family affair with Sophie Hyde writing and directing, Bryan Mason editing and their child, Aud Mason-Hyde, acting. (Australian Story: Tom Hancock)
‘My dad’s gay’: A secret shared
Sophie remembers walking around the playground of her Adelaide primary school with a friend in the early 1980s and sharing her secret.
Sophie Hyde (right) with her sister Alice and their father Jim. (Supplied: Sophie Hyde)
“My dad’s gay,” she told her friend.
Sophie widens her eyes in surprise, the way her friend did.
“It was something that I felt I had to have my own coming out about, especially when I was little,” she says. “It seemed like something that was outside of the norm.”
And it could be dangerous. In 1972, a homosexual man, George Duncan, drowned after being bashed and thrown into the River Torrens by a group of men.
It prompted Australia’s first legislation decriminalising homosexuality in 1975, but negative attitudes were still strong when Sophie’s father came out to his wife, Christine, in 1978.
Sophie Hyde’s mother Christine James says she was devastated when her husband Jim Hyde came out as gay. (Supplied: Sophie Hyde)
Christine was devastated. “He had been trying it out secretly,” Christine says. “I felt betrayed. I was very angry and very, very upset.”
Their daughter Alice was about four and Sophie was 13 months. The shock led Christine to stop breastfeeding, layering guilt on top of her devastation.
But the couple decided to stay together, at least until Christine could find work and be financially independent.
“We tried to love and respect each other as people not conforming to the society expectations of sexuality, gender and marriage,” Christine says. “And I think we were successful.”
An excerpt from a magazine article about the Hyde family. (Supplied/Australian Story graphics)
At the start, they only confided in family and select friends. But as Jim began to live more openly as a gay man, and the AIDS epidemic took hold, he became a founding member of the AIDS Council of South Australia and the South Australian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby.
Jim Hyde was a prominent advocate in the AIDS awareness movement. (Supplied: Sophie Hyde/Australian Story graphics)
Jim was a big personality, says Sophie. He enjoyed rigorous debates, could be both charming and rude, and was a fierce advocate for justice, equality and safe sex education.
He was highly motivated and intelligent, rising through government ranks in South Australia before moving to Melbourne in 1990 to become general manager of the Victorian AIDS Council.
So, it was a shock when Jim visited Adelaide in 1992 to deliver the news that he was HIV-positive.
“I did feel disillusioned,” Sophie says. “I felt like, ‘Gosh, you’ve been teaching me one thing and you’ve gone and done something else’. That felt irresponsible.
“Mostly, though, I was just sad, just upset that he would die. Because that’s what was happening. Everyone was dying.”
Jim Hyde began to live a more openly gay life when he moved to Melbourne in the early 1990s. (Supplied: Sophie Hyde/Australian Story graphics)
But Jim survived, helped by the arrival of powerful new drugs, and was alive when Aud was born in 2005.
“To have had him there when Aud was born was kind of amazing,” Sophie says. “I think he felt that as well, just as much as I did.”
Jim Hyde with baby Aud. (Supplied: Sophie Hyde)
The gift of being ‘authentically yourself’
Baby Aud with their parents. (Supplied: Sophie Hyde)
It was clear from an early age, Sophie says, that Aud would not live within “rigid gender binaries”.
“They always felt like they moved between those worlds,” she says.
“They just wore what they liked, hung out with who they liked. It wasn’t like there was someone who always wanted to hang out with the boys. It wasn’t so clear as that. It was very much a non-binary childhood.”
The premise of Jimpa is the conversations that were never able to play out between Aud and Jim. (Supplied: Mark De Blok, Kismet)
Growing up, Aud wasn’t overly aware of Jim’s gay activism or his rise through the ranks to become Victoria’s Director of Public Health.
He was just “my endlessly loveable grandfather, my Jimpa”, who would make bread and butter pudding for Aud when they visited.
But, says Aud: “I think the way that Jim lived his life, how openly he lived his life set a culture in the family that allowed me to be who I was, who I am, that allowed me to authentically be myself.”
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At the age of 12, Aud gave a TEDx talk in front of almost 1,000 people, and said: “If we’re talking biology, I’m female, but I feel that it’s more complex than that.”
Jim watched the video of his grandchild’s talk with pride. His friend, David Menadue, recalls Jim thinking Aud was “going to be a bit of a game-changer”.
Aud was a child when Jim died after suffering a stroke. (Supplied: Sophie Hyde)
“I think that suited Jim’s personality to think Aud’s going to be, not a revolutionary, but going to change people’s view of the world,” David says.
Eight months after Aud’s talk, Jim suffered a stroke, his second, and about 10 days later he died.
The big, challenging, beautiful life of Jim Hyde was over as Aud’s was taking flight.
‘People don’t know what to make of me’
The online death threats started when Aud was 14 after appearing on the ABC talking about being non-binary.
It was a frightening and confusing time for Aud.
“People don’t know what to make of me,” they say.
“Instead of allowing that uncertainty to be something that becomes curiosity or a search for a deeper understanding of themselves or me or of the world, it is a lot easier to become a bit of a keyboard warrior.”
Aud explained on Four Corners in 2020: “You don’t have to change your body to be valid as a non-binary person.” (Four Corners)
But Aud’s ability to draw on Jim’s experience as a gay activist and the support of their family made them realise how privileged they were, and “it makes me only want to make it better for the people who have none of those privileges”.
“If I can be so supported and I can have so much privilege and still be ruthlessly bullied … what is it like to not be able to say who you are? What is it like to not know another trans person?”
Aud is helping to bridge that gap now, co-founding TRANSMEDIUM, a trans-led community arts organisation, producing a magazine geared towards trans youth, and giving speeches.
Aud Mason-Hyde as Frances in a scene from Jimpa. (Supplied: Mark De Blok, Kismet)
Then there is their acting and the release of Jimpa. There were many points during the making of the film, says Aud, when the long journey — and hard-fought wins — of the queer community came into sharp focus.
“It has struck me how much social and cultural change has happened over the lifetime of Jim and of my grandma to now, and how reflective my family is of that cultural and societal change,” Aud says.
Jimpa premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2025. (Australian Story: Vanessa Gorman)
Reflecting such changes, holding a mirror to society is what Sophie does as a filmmaker, but she admits the release of this one, this deeply personal one, comes with a heightened mix of excitement and trepidation.
She knows she’s exposing herself and the people she loves to criticism, but that’s nothing new to this family or to those proudly waving the rainbow flag.
“I find these people amazing,” Sophie says.
“People that have had to stand up as themselves … they are on the front lines of things and people have opinions at them and attack them and are harsh and dismissive and sometimes violent and they still somehow stand there doing that.
“My dad has been that person and now my child is as well,” Sophie says. “I think they’re incredibly brave humans and they’re resilient and they show us a way to live and be that is very beautiful.”
Sophie Hyde says her dad, and now child, have shown how to live as “your full true self”. (Australian Story: Vanessa Gorman)
Watch ‘Out in the Open’, Monday at 8:00pm (AEDT), on ABCTV and ABC iview.
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