In The Queen of My Dreams, a queer Pakistani-Canadian woman and her once-outgoing mother find their way back to each other after a family tragedy gives them new, unconsidered insights.
The Queen of My Dreams
Fawzia Mirza (director and writer), Matt Irwin (cinematography), Simone Smith (editor)
Amrit Kaur, Nimra Bucha, Hamza Haq, Ayana Manji, Gul e Rana (cast)
September 8, 2023
I guess after my experience last year, I shouldn’t be surprised that one of my favourite films of TIFF 2023 is a South Asian-Canadian film. Maybe it’s my personal understanding of the cultural references or just the joy of watching people from my OG part of the world on the big screen embracing my new home, aka Canada, but The Queen of My Dreams was an absolute delight to watch.
The Queen of My Dreams is based on a short film and play by Fawzia Mirza about her own estrangement from her mother when she came out as queer. The film is multilayered and enjoys playing within those striations. There’s the coming-of-age story set in 1999 Toronto and Karachi with Azra (Amrit Kaur), who’s enjoying her queer freedom at grad school but is also chafing against her mother Mariam’s (Nimra Bucha) Islamic and heteronormative expectations.
Additionally, there are the flashback sequences in The Queen of My Dreams of young Mariam (also played by Kaur) in 1969 Karachi, who is carefree and challenges the patriarchy in her own ways, and is also trying to get away from her mother’s loving but smothering arms. When she and Edinburgh-based doctor Hassan (Hamza Haq) fall in love, Mariam sees a chance for happiness and escape. So how did this gregarious woman become such a stickler 30 years later? That’s the answer Azra searches for when her father dies during a trip to Pakistan. Azra’s about to learn a lot about her mother and the world she comes from.
The film title The Queen of My Dreams is inspired by Azra and Mariam’s shared love of the 1969 Bollywood film Aradhana, starring Sharmila Tagore and Rajesh Khanna. Most South Asians are going to know about this film, but my Bollywood knowledge isn’t great. Thank goodness my dad gave me an impromptu lesson recently about Aradhana and played the songs for me because it helped me appreciate The Queen of My Dreams (based on the hit song Sapno Ki Rani) so much more. I wouldn’t say you need to watch Aradhana because The Queen of My Dreams provides enough context but if you read up about it you can really enjoy the visual throwbacks in this film.
First of all, I need to say, I loved the casting! Amrit Kaur looks like a modern day Sharmila Tagore, in fact, I’d say she looks surprisingly like Tagore‘s son Saif Ali Khan, which seems a masterful casting choice. Kaur and Bucha also do a marvellous job of playing to each other’s strengths so you believe they are one and the same person just decades apart. The rest is movie magic and the willing suspension of disbelief.
The set design in The Queen of My Dreams is amazing. Whether it’s 1999 Toronto, 1969 Karachi or 1989 Nova Scotia, it feels so tangible. Mirza explained how 1969 Karachi was captured—the team found buildings in Pakistan that had been built a long time ago but were still standing as the backdrop for the time period. It’s a simple method but very effective because I felt like I was watching a cleaned up old Bollywood film.
Mirza also mentioned that she was inspired by Wes Anderson and there are some hints of that in the colour palette and the very amusing method of shooting the ‘60s highway scenes. However, the colouring came across more as the palettes of South Asian films of the time, at least for me.
The Queen of My Dreams has a lot of playful visual techniques that I enjoyed, such as the myriad recurring visual motifs that made the audience laugh. But they were simultaneously poking fun at the rituals of wooing in South Asia, as well as of Tupperware parties in Nova Scotia.
Amongst the colourful flashbacks and the queer joy is a story about grief. The funeral scenes were really tough to watch. The frustrating thing about leaving your home country is the news from home always seems to bad news, and it’s usually about death. The day I went to see this film, I got news about yet another person passing away. Maybe that’s why the funeral scenes affected me so much?
There’s yet another layer that I found surprising—how much time The Queen of My Dreams took to address Azra’s discomfort with the funeral rituals and the fact she can’t participate, even though her brother can. The gender divide is “archaic” for Azra, yet Mariam insists on following the rules. I couldn’t help thinking how just a couple of years before this film is set, my mother was dealing with the same difficulties—albeit across the border and in another religion. Unlike Azra, my mother did manage to do the last rites for both her parents despite not being a son.
But essentially, The Queen of My Dreams is about three generations of women wanting to hold on too tight to their daughters yet at the same time, imposing societal rules on them, causing so much estrangement and sorrow in their wakes. It’s not a hopeless film, by any means, but it does question how generations of South Asians have been impacted because they were too beholden to the status quo.
I absolutely adored the love story between Mariam and Hassan. It was beautiful to watch and the chemistry between the actors makes it work. Hamza Haq plays young Hassan romancing and being romanced by Kaur’s Mariam and he brings that same charm to his scenes with Bucha’s Mariam, even under layers of makeup. The scenes of the older Hassan and Mariam reminded my so much of my grandparents and their love story. I couldn’t help but recall how hard it was for my grandmum to lose her husband. So yes, there were a lot of tears. And not just from me. By the end of the film, there was not a dry eye in the hall.
I would have liked some resolution to Azra coming out as queer—does her mother accept her? What about her family in Pakistan? It’s left up in the air a bit in. But I understand that The Queen of My Dreams is about a mother and daughter finding their way to each other so perhaps it’s implied that Azra’s queerness will also be accepted.
I’m relieved I caught a screening of The Queen of My Dreams because it was hard to get tickets and the theatre was really packed. It was fascinating to see so many different groups of people enjoying the film and I guess that gives you an idea of the Canadian experience—we’re from everywhere and we love learning about each other’s cultures. The film was heartwarming and heartrending. It was funny and cute and visually striking. Such a wonderful way to end my second day at TIFF 2023.
