in English with no subtitles and Urdu with English subtitles
Saturday, June 22, 2024, 8:30 PM, Palace of Fine Arts
Digital Screening Room streaming (within California only)
First a couple of bits of housekeeping. The film is subtitled in Urdu as “دا قُین آف مای ڈریمز”; I struggled to find a translation, but finally figured out that it’s actually just the title in English but written in Urdu phonetics.
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| The Queen of My Dreams Azra & Mariam, present day |
Now the basic setup of the story (no spoilers). The Queen of My Dreams is an intergenerational family drama, most of it taking place in Karachi, Pakistan in 1969, in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 1989, and in Karachi in the present, at Azra’s father’s funeral. The grandmother is Amira, the mother Mariam, and the queer daughter Canadian-born Azra.
We see how Amira and Mariam handle Mariam’s marriage and move to Canada, how Mariam tries to shape the 12-year-old Azra into a good Muslim girl, and finally Mariam’s resistance to Azra’s attempts to chart the course of her own life. The story is semi-autobiographical, and by the way, Sharmila Tagore is still a real-life Bollywood actress, thanked in the credits. With the flashbacks, we see clearly the trauma passing from Amira to Mariam to Azra. It’s a powerful and compelling drama, definitely a MUST SEE for everyone, even if you can’t find Pakistan on a map.
Fawzia Mirza’s previous short “The Syed Family Xmas Eve Game Night”😒 (Frameline46) didn’t impress me much, but her first feature is top-notch.
• IMDb
• Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook
• teaser trailer
• trailer
• Wikipedia
• Rotten Tomatoes: 88% •
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