Queen of my Dreams
Director: Fawzia Mirza Starring: Amrit Kaur, Hamza Haq, Nimra Bucha Run time: 97 mins | Recommended Certificate: 18 Language: English, Urdu with English subtitles | Year: 2023 | Country: Canada, Pakistan
Closing Gala
In this colourful and song-soaked delight of a film, young Pakistani woman Azra lives an alternative lifestyle with her white female buddy in Toronto, which is worlds apart from her conservative Muslim mother’s traditional values. When her beloved father suddenly dies on a trip home to Pakistan, Azra finds herself on a flight to Karachi, where she discovers her Bollywood inspired connection to memories of childhood and the truth of her once liberal mother and father’s 1960s love marriage.
Director
Fawzia Mirza
Fawzia Mirza (she/they) is a White House Champion of Change in Asian storytelling, an alum of the Tribeca Film Institute, TIFF Writer's Studio and Filmmaker Lab, Ryan Murphy’s Half Initiative, and the Canadian Academy of Women Directors' Program, and her new feature script HEIRLOOM was named to the 2022 Muslim List - The Black List's curation of the best unproduced scripts by Muslim writers. Her feature directorial debut THE QUEEN OF MY DREAMS, shot in Canada and Pakistan, world premiered at TIFF 2023, had its international premiere at the BFI London Film Festival and was nominated for the Director’s Guild of Canada’s Jean-Marc Vallée Discovery Award and the BFI’s Sutherland First Feature Award. She co-wrote, produced & starred in the feature SIGNATURE MOVE which world premiered at SXSW and won 15 awards around the globe (including the US Grand Jury Prize Outfest). She wrote on Ava DuVernay and Greg Berlanti's CBS series THE RED LINE; her episode marked the first queer, Muslim romance on network TV. She wrote/directed the short films I KNOW HER (Palm Springs, Outfest, CBC Short Film Face Off Finalist) NOOR & LAYLA (BlackStar, Bentonville, Short of the Week, distributed by Frameline Voices, CBC GEM & Argo) BROWN ELEPHANT (20th Digital Studio, 2.3M views), and on TikTok series HIDDEN CANYONS. She directed THE SYED FAMILY XMAS EVE GAME NIGHT (written by and starring Kausar Mohammed) which world premiered at TIFF 2021, was named to Canada’s Top 10 and one of Harper’s Bazaar’s “Best Christmas Movies of 2021”. Her short AUNTIE, executive produced by Paul Feig, is now streaming on The New Yorker. She co-founded and runs BABY DAAL PRODUCTIONS with her wife, producer Andria Wilson Mirza.