Natalie D.C.
A charming and moving comedy-drama, The Queen of My Dreams follows Azra (Amrit Kaur), a queer Pakistani Canadian grad student living in 1990s Toronto whose world turns upside-down after a call from her conservative mother Mariam (Nimra Bucha) with news of her father Hassan’s (Hamza Haq) untimely passing sends her to the Karachi, Pakistan of her family’s present—and past. Written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Fawzia Mirza, this directorial debut premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and is set for release in U.S. theaters by Willa and Product of Culture.
Inspired by the Bollywood films of Mirza’s youth, this deeply personal narrative is punctuated by a fun editing style and heartfelt emotional beats as it seeks to explore themes of family, grief, identity, and what it means to belong. While its short runtime is jam-packed with meaning, The Queen of My Dreams succeeds in taking its audience on a journey through time and place as mother-daughter duo Azra and Mariam reminisce and, ultimately, reconcile in the wake of tragedy.
From its beginning, the film proves colorful and memorable with warm color-grading and a sprawling style of editing (reminiscent of a slide projector) courtesy of Simone Smith who has worked on other Canadian indie gems including I Like Movies and Slash/Back. Behind each scene is a passion for the setting in which its characters reside, whether it be Azra in 1990s Toronto, Mariam in 1969 Karachi, or the pair in 1989 Nova Scotia.
This use of editing is not the only element that allows The Queen of My Dreams to flow so seamlessly between Azra’s family history. The Sex Lives of College Girls’s Amrit Kaur plays a monumental role in this film, her outstanding performances as both present-day Azra and young Mariam creating smooth transitions between Mariam’s past dreams of becoming an actress amidst her whirlwind romance with Hassan (who is impressively played at all ages by Hamza Haq) and Azra’s present-day dreams of becoming an actress amidst her secret relationship with her “roommate” Rachel (Kya Mosey).
The Queen of My Dreams doesn’t just successfully dissect parallels between mother and daughter; the film also tackles themes of religious conservatism and gender norms, particularly in the 1989 scenes when Mariam (realistically played by Nimra Bucha) goes from Azra’s doting mother to a bitter judge of morals after Hassan falls ill and she turns to religion. Despite Mariam’s harmful actions against her daughter’s gender expression and sexuality, her character—and, in turn, her devotion to Islam—is never villainized. Rather, refreshingly, she is portrayed as a victim of her stifled life as an immigrant housewife in rural Canada, far away from her home and unable to fit in with peers who constantly mock her culture. In this timeline, both Mariam and Azra are circumstantially shackled—Mariam to a life she never wanted and Azra to a family she feels does not want her.
In present-day Karachi, these same themes bubble to the surface when Azra is denied from participating in the funeral rites for her father due to her gender. After Mariam’s refusal, Azra confidently replies, “Rules are meant to be broken,” a line Mariam herself spoke to young Azra in the 1989 timeline. While Azra does not get her wish of tending to her father’s body before he is put to rest, her point is made all-too-clear, both to the viewers and to her grief-stricken mother.
One last mainstay of The Queen of My Dreams is its use of theatrics, befitting both Mariam and Azra’s aspirations. Throughout the story, scenes from the classic 1969 Bollywood film Aradhana are spliced with Azra and Mariam’s lives as they both imagine themselves as the lead actress Sharmila Tagore (making the film’s original title, Me, My Mom & Sharmila, all the more clear). This inclusion not only adds another layer to the mother-daughter duo’s shared passion for acting, it also allows the film to act as a true love letter to Bollywood.
Because this film juggles so many elements, pacing is bound to be an issue, particularly when it comes to the unequal distribution of runtime given to each timeline. However, despite its lofty ambitions, The Queen of My Dreams mostly succeeds in telling a heartfelt and oh-so-important story of love, loss, and belonging between two grieving women whose shared experiences as determined immigrants with big dreams ultimately bring them together.
