Award-winning South Asian production to be released next month
Peccadillo Pictures has announced that it will release Fawzia Mirza’s (pictured above) award-winning feature directorial debut, The Queen Of My Dreams, in UK cinemas on 13th September.
The Queen Of My Dreams is a semi-autobiographical film by writer/director Fawzia Mirza about her experiences as a queer Canadian woman of South Asian heritage.
1999, Azra (Amrit Kaur) travels from Toronto to Karachi after her father Hassan’s (Hamza Haq) sudden death, forcing her to confront her complicated relationship with her mother Mariam (Nimra Bucha).
The film flashes back to 1960s Karachi, portraying a booming, groovy period where the young Mariam (also played by Kaur) rebelliously pursues her path in life. When a chance meeting with Hassan occurred, it was love at first sight.
In the modern-day storyline, Azra must navigate mourning her idealised late father while trying to understand her equally complex living mother. The film explores the dangers of putting loved ones on pedestals rather than seeing their full humanity. It’s a story about intergenerational divides, culture clashes, and the messy reality of mother-daughter relationships.
While paying homage to the classic Bollywood film and song “Meri Sapno Ki Rani” (The Queen of My Dreams), the movie’s heart lies in Mirza’s look at her family dynamics and quest for self-discovery. It’s an insightful, comedic, and moving examination of South Asian identity.
Fawzia Mirza says, “The Queen Of My Dreams is a dramedy spanning 30 years in the life of a Pakistani-Canadian family. It explores the intergenerational connections between mothers and daughters, East and West, home and away, infused with humour, romance, music and Bollywood fantasy. Inspired by personal experiences, some of my mother’s stories are intertwined with Pakistani history and collective memory.
“The film shows the expansive journey of women seeking to define and decide their paths while simultaneously learning – and remembering – how to love. It also explores the question I find myself asking in all my work, “How do we become who we are?”
“To answer that question, I turned to my conservative mother, a woman who seems so different from me, and yet, we are so similar. She told me some stories of her past, which made her sound like a movie star, like the iconic actress Sharmila Tagore. But the past still felt like a mystery. I wanted to know more. I found myself nostalgic for her youth in 1960s Pakistan, ‘The Golden Era’ of the country. That was a place I’d never been to, but I yearned to visit. It didn’t sound anything like the Pakistan I knew, and I just wanted to understand my mother better. It’s why the 60s was such an important era in this film.
“Who I am is impacted by who my mother is and who she was. And who her mother was – our intergenerational connection. Inspired by this and the South Asian cinematic device of “doubling,” I creatively cast the same actor who plays Azra at 22 to play her mother at the same age in 1969.
“Music evokes memory and nostalgia, and the music throughout the film is intended to do just that. The 1969 Sharmila Tagore inspires the film’s title hit film, “Aradhana”, and one of its classic songs, Mere Sapnon Ki Rani (The Queen of My Dreams). It’s a song about a man finding the love of his life, the queen of his dreams. I grew up in a heteronormative patriarchal society, so I always fantasised some man would sing this to me.
“When I came out as queer, I thought the song no longer applied, or rather, maybe a woman would sing it to me. But I realised I was the queen of my dreams. In Azra’s journey in the film, she realises she has the agency to step out of the generational mistakes made by her mother and her mother before her. Azra is the queen of her dreams.
“This film is my way of travelling to the past, to imagine a world my mother might have lived in. A world that blends genres — rich, technicolour, heightened scenes inspired by Mere Sapnon Ki Rani amidst the realities of grief and loss. This film folds those ideas into the storytelling through flashback, comedy, fantasy sequences, and qawwali-inspired music set in the places I’ve romanticised through memory: 1969 Karachi, Pakistan and 1989 Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada.
“Much like our lives, making this film has been a journey. It began in 2012 as a short film (also titled) The Queen Of My Dreams and then a play, Me, My Mom and Sharmila, in 2014. After that, I worked on the screenplay for seven years, in various iterations and collaborations, before entering pre-production in summer 2022.”
The Queen Of My Dreams explores not putting loved ones on pedestals and the reality of navigating mother-daughter relationships. It examines intergenerational divides, culture clashes and self-realisation. The film’s heart lies in writer/director Fawzia Mirza’s look at her family dynamics and her journey as a queer Canadian woman. It’s an insightful and humorous examination of South Asian identity.
The Queen of My Dreams, distributed by Peccadillo Pictures, will be released in UK cinemas on September 13th.
