Award-Winning Film “The Queen of My Dreams” Gets American Debut
“Y’all have been asking when and where you can see the movie and here it is,” Mirza wrote on Instagram about the premiere. “We are so blessed and have our dream U.S. premiere [at] a festival that screened my first feature, a place where my life changed.”
Against the backdrop of a shared obsession with Bollywood fantasy, "The Queen of My Dreams" follows a Pakistani Muslim woman and her Canadian-born daughter as they come of age in two different eras.
“Y’all have been asking when and where you can see the movie and here it is,” Mirza wrote on Instagram about the premiere. “We are so blessed and have our dream U.S. premiere [at] a festival that screened my first feature, a place where my life changed.” In the same post, Mirza announced that “The Queen of My Dreams” would screen to U.S. audiences in SXSW’s Festival favorite” category, which platforms acclaimed standouts from festivals around the world.
“The Queen of My Dreams” follows Azra (Amrit Kaur), a Pakistani Canadian woman who’s more interested in grad school than being her mother Mariam’s (Nimra Bucha) perfect Muslim daughter. Azra’s relationship with her parents has been strained since coming out as queer, but when her father (Hamza Haq) suddenly passes away, she must return to Pakistan and confront the complicated relationship she shares with her mother. From there, the film follows the now-conservative Mariam through a series of flashbacks of her own complex life in Karachi 30 years prior. Kaur also plays the younger version of her mother in a casting choice Mirza credits as “homage to South Asian films where double-casting is a common practice.”
The film has reached acclaim since its Sep. 2023 debut. “The Queen of My Dreams” was shortlisted for the 2023 Jean-Marc Vallée DGC Discovery Award at the Directors Guild of Canada. Mirza was also nominated for First Feature Competition at the London Film Festival. Kaur was awarded for her performance as both Azra and Young Mariam when she won Best Actress at the Iris Prize Festival.
SXSW 2024 will take place March 8 through March 16 in Austin, Texas. You can browse tickets at the link below.
Anwar Molani is a doctor by day and actor by night. He plays Dad, Soniya and Yasmeen’s family patriarch, in the “Ramadan America” short “In The Meantime.”
