Peccadillo Pictures has announced the release of the award-winning film ‘The Queen of My Dreams’ in UK cinemas on September 13. Starring Canadian Indian actor Amrit Kaur in the role of Azra, the film’s title is a homage to the classic Bollywood song Mere Sapnon Ki Rani from the 1970s Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore box-office hit ‘Aradhana’.
‘The Queen of My Dreams’, a literal translation of the song, is a joyful, funny and affecting semi-autobiographical film by writer-director Fawzia Mirza about her experiences as a queer Canadian woman of South Asian heritage.
The year is 1999, Azra 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 own path in life. A chance meeting with Hassan results in love at first sight.
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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.
Mirza said: “The Queen of My Dreams is a dramedy spanning 30 years in the life of a Pakistani-Canadian family. It’s an exploration of 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, intertwined with Pakistani history and collective memory. The film shows the expansive journey of women, seeking to define and decide their own paths, while simultaneously learning – and remembering – how to love. And it explores the question I find myself asking in all my work: How do we become who we are?”
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As music evokes memory and nostalgia, the music throughout the film is intended to do just that. 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 – that she is the queen of her own dreams.
The film’s journey began in 2012 as a short film and then a play entitled ‘Me, My Mom and Sharmila’ in 2014, after which Mirza worked on the screenplay for seven years. The result is an insightful and humorous examination of South Asian identity, which won Kaur a Canadian Screen Award recently in the Best Performance in a Leading Role category.