The Queen of My Dreams: An Interview with Fawzia Mirza

Fawzia Mirza’s directorial feature film debut The Queen of My Dreams (2023) traverses three time periods and locations: 1999 in Toronto and Karachi, the 1980s in Nova Scotia, and the 1960s in Karachi. Inspired by the Technicolour cinematography, fantasy elements, and music of classic Bollywood films, the film focuses on Azra (Amrit Kaur), a queer Muslim MFA student living in Toronto with her girlfriend (Charlie Boyle) and her strained relationship with her parents. When her father (Hamza Haq) dies on a trip to Pakistan, Azra travels there for the funeral. What makes this film exceptional is how it beautifully captures important moments in the lives of Azra, including as a child (played by Ayana Manji), and her mother Mariam (Nimra Bucha) throughout these three different times and places while exploring the difficulties of mother/daughter bonds. Kaur plays the roles of Azra and her mother, both in their twenties, so believably well it was as if I was witnessing two different people.

Kristen Hutchinson (KH): What brought you to tell this story?  

Fawzia Mirza (FM): Well, it has its roots in a short film that I made that world premiered in 2012 at the Seattle International Film Festival. And the intent behind that short film was that I was really struggling in a very public way with a very private issue, which was could I be queer and Muslim and love Bollywood romance at the same time. And, you know, that short film I made really before I knew I was a filmmaker. I shot all the footage to be a more of a performance arts piece for a gallery. And a friend of mine said he could help me turn it into a three-minute short film. And so, he did, and we did. That really embarked this direction of visual storytelling through film. And, you know, I would say making that film really saved my life and began the journey of both telling stories, but also working out those struggles and having that film or those films be a way to come to terms with whatever the thing is that I'm wrestling with.

KH: Tell me where the title comes from and how the film was inspired by Bollywood. 

FM: The spark and origin of the title comes from the origin and spark for the song that is very thematically in in this movie, “Mere Sapno Ki Rani”, which loosely translates to the Queen of my dreams. That’s from a very famous film [Ardhana] from 1969 starring Sharmila Tagore and Rajesh Khanna and that song was really something that I'd heard growing up my whole life. You hear it in its original form, but then you heard it remixed on dance floors. And, you know, even today, you'll hear it at a party, or, you know, at a wedding or whatever. And the lyrics roughly translate to “the Queen of my dreams, when will you come? I'm looking for you, I'm searching for you.” This guy is singing this song to this woman, searching for the love of his life. And in the movie, they have this very love at first sight kind of connection. And for me, I kept wondering, in my life, like, when would be the moment that I would have that kind of love. Having watched these big, epic, sweeping Bollywood films as a kid, like that is what I dreamt of the great epic romance like that, or just like who you're gonna marry. I'm like, well, I want the great epic romance. Like that is what we should all have is this fantasy. And so, I dreamt of that. It was like, okay, some guy one day is gonna sing for me the Queen of my dreams, he's gonna sing that song to me. And then when I started coming out as queer, I sort of reimagined it. And I was like, okay, well, some woman is gonna sing the song to me.

And, you know, in the short film, one of the realizations that the character has is that maybe I'm the queen of my own dreams, not my mother's, not Bollywood's. That really stuck with me as the idea of how we and maybe some of us make movies and some of us don't, but we're often reimagining and inserting ourselves in the heart of these songs and these poems and these movies. We have these connections inherently, which is why we're drawn to the emotion, and the themes of story, regardless of what it looks like. And so that stuck with me. And you can see it in the feature as well as this idea of reimagining the fantasy with from a different lens, where the gender isn't such a binary.

KH: How does your film embrace lesboqueer joy, instead of the typical “bury your gays” trope that we so often see in film and TV? 

FM: Well, I think for me, creating joy came out of necessity, because when I startedmaking short films, there was nothing for me to look to that expressed the struggle specifically that I was having, in the worlds, and in the communities that I was specifically a part of. Of course, there's queer and lesbian movies that have been around for a long time that expressed that struggle. But I just didn't see Muslims or South Asians at the time. I mean, a few, you had Chutney Popcorn (1999), a classic film by Nisha Ganatra, and My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) was one but like, few and far between. When I was looking for the specificity of my experience, I just started making it to try to reconcile it. And so, the joy was out of necessity, because I didn't want to have a not happy ending for my own life. 

And so, if I wanted a happy ending, I had to write the happy ending literally, and imagine a happy ending, so that I could imagine that possibility in my actual life. You know the manifesting we talk about that we must do and the positive thinking we must do, that is what I was doing through film. My struggle of looking for the language and not having the language and not having the sort of historic context of what I was going through, not having the language is what allowed me to make the art. I ended up becoming my mission that of telling stories where there is joy, and there is hope and possibility and potential. Plenty of people are telling the trauma stories and plenty of people are telling the death stories. But I need and want us to live and thrive and stay alive and help

each other. And now more than ever, it's not just something we need. It’ s something without which we will all die.

KH: This is your first feature as a director, what were the challenges that you faced in making the film? 

It was only after the fact that I had the reflection of, oh, wow, that was so incredibly challenging to make a film in two countries with three time periods with the budget that we had. Now, I understand why people make their directorial debut feature in one city with three locations and two actors. It’s a miracle to make a movie. And so, the more layers you have, the harder you're making it for yourself to succeed. The time periods were really challenging. 

We were so fortunate to have this incredible both production design team led by Michael Pearson, who is based in Halifax, and who's also nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for his work, rightfully so. But then also our production, our wardrobe design team, and our hair and makeup team, you know, in Pakistan and in Canada, who are also working together to tell that story. You need those folks who are with you, and investing as much emotionally as you are into the work. 

Just the logistics of flying from one city to another city across the world. We brought our actors, our production designer, our incredible DP, Matt Irwin, and our producers. So, we did have some continuity that was really, I would say, essential to the whole film. You know, it wasn't just me that was thinking about the whole film. It was our production designer, it was our DP, our producers, obviously. So, you know, those things inherently are challenges.

Also, something that's not quite as sexy or fun to talk about is insurance and I think it's important that we talk about that stuff. You can't make a feature film without having film insurance, in case something goes wrong, and things always go wrong. It doesn't matter if you're making in downtown Toronto, or in Karachi, Pakistan, things go wrong, things break, microphones might fall in water. And who's going to pay for that? If you have insurance, insurance covers those things.

But it was really hard for us to get insurance. One of the things that happens when you're getting insurance is they do a risk assessment as to where you're shooting. And it&s, for some reason, more risky to film in Pakistan. And I understand that maybe there's some mystery there and it hasn't been done that often in Canada. there was a tornado in Cape Breton. Therefore, we can't insure your Halifax shoot.

It was really hard. We were denied a lot, we finally got insured, we were so blessed. The last person who gave it, we had to pay a lot. And it was like, triple what other people were paying or what we other someone another movie would have paid. And quite frankly, the place where we struggled, that was risky, was Nova Scotia. Because when we went to Cape Breton to shoot B-roll, there had just been a huge hurricane that came through. And it impacted our filming, all the leaves were off the trees, people were struggling, you know. That was something that that I was new to me, and that the system is not working for certain communities and is creating barriers. And so, if the insurers had said no, then we could not have gone to camera. There’s so many, there's so many things that make making a movie challenging, but insurance is really important to talk about.

KH: What did you enjoy about the process? What were the elements that brought you joy in the making? 

FW: I learned a lot, getting to work with such incredible teams in different places, you know, working with an incredible non-union crew in Nova Scotia, working with a huge crew in Pakistan, that is a bit more DIY and having to solve problems in a sometimes-non-traditional way. Getting the opportunity to try so many things and everybody being on board. We did have some traditional footage and coverage. And then also, we didn't, and we got to do some stunts, and we got to do really emotional work. We did a couple pieces of handheld, but then also we worked with some great production design.

So it was a remarkable experience across the board, working with these incredible actors, Amrit Kaur [Azra, the protagonist] and Hamza Haq [Hassan, her father] and Nimra Bucha [Mariam, her mother], who are such professional, talented actors, and getting to work with some of the best folks in Nova Scotia who came on as day players and just really ate the scene. Our actors in Pakistan are some of the best, some incredible drama actors. Drama is the name for like a soap opera there and those are very, very popular. So, we had some incredible drama actors, and then also some incredible theatre actors who came in and just nailed their scene in a way where the scene just wouldn't have worked if they weren't so talented and working with Ayana Manji [who plays the main character as child]. I also got to work with kids, and that presents its own challenge.

For me, there was so much that I got to do, and I was very fortunate that I got to do them. Part of that is also having incredible producers who said yes, and then we figured out the best way to execute in terms of what we had and always helping find me find what I needed.

KH: It must have been hard to transform those images in Pakistan into the 1960s.

FW: Pakistan does not look the same. Karachi does not look the same. There’s just so many more people, which has an impact on everything, whether that's more electrical wires, or more homes or buildings or stuff on the streets, it's a lot. We were very strategic. We found a few places exterior wise, that were there in 1969, and used the device of repetition to create a world. There were locations that existed back in the day, and we recreated them. We took a lot of liberty with what they were like then, but recreated them, knowing they were real locations, like the Hotel Metropole. Creating the idea and feeling of what that was like, you know, nostalgia is visual, it's also emotional, right? So, what was the emotional truth of what people were experiencing in the 60s? 

The club scene where there's a live band, I mean, that was really important, because we knew there were these bands that were performing at these clubs. And we got a song, for example, that was an actual 60s song, recorded by a band that wasn't as popular as the Beatles, by any means, but it has that sound. So, we got our band in Pakistan to, we got the rights to this song, and we had them record it and perform it live. So, you have also an original song that has a feeling and you're like, wait, I know that song, right? And it's like, maybe, but probably not. The emotionality was really key.

KH: The casting of Amrit Kaur from the TV series Sex Lives of College Girls as Azra, the protagonist, was perfect. How did she become involved? 

FW: We worked with Jesse Griffiths Casting based out of Toronto and met a range of actors. We knew it would be tough because there were two roles that this actor had to play, and they also had to have some grasp of Urdu and I wanted them to be queer so that they could have a real connection to Azra and the material. It's like, what is your personal connection to this world that creates that recognition and that chemistry and it's not just always romantic chemistry, it's also chemistry to self and the struggle and the themes. Amrit was someone our casting director who came up and obviously, and I knew her from the show. We met her through zoom, and she auditioned and there was a great spark that she had. I got to do further follow up where I met her in person because she was filming in Los Angeles at the time. I knew that she not only had the spark but had the chemistry for some of these pieces. 

She’s an actor's actor. She loves to do the work and she had worked with Hamza [Haq] before, which was also something that I took into consideration. There was a lot of pieces and elements that made sense for casting her and I just can't imagine anyone else who would have been able to do that. 

KH: For The Queen of My Dreams, you were part of a Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) program?

FW: TIFF came into the picture for me in 2020. And this was after I'd made a lot of short films, all privately funded, personally funded work. I'd made another feature film that was at South by Southwest in 2017, called Signature Move, also very independently financed. But The Queen of My Dreams screenplay, which used to have a different title, got into the TIFF writers lab. In March 2020, I was in Toronto, workshopping this screenplay and also, you know, meeting other great Canadian screenwriters.

That sort of began the journey. And then, you know, that same year in the fall, I got into the TIFF filmmakers lab, which was all virtual, because by then we were like deep in the heart of the pandemic. And the screenwriter’s lab was actually both the week of my birthday, but also the week that Tom Hanks was diagnosed with COVID. So that Friday, which marked the end of our lab was also the last day the lightbox was open for, maybe a year or whatever it was many, many months. And I've stayed connected with the program;s team there, and it felt like TIFF was the perfect world premiere for us. 

KH: Do you have any new projects in the works? 

FM: Yeah, I'm a bit of a workaholic. I have many projects on the go at various stages, you know, both in the feature space and the TV space. I just directed on an episode for a new Hulu half hour comedy, which is exciting. So yeah, juggling a lot of things and excited to be able to share more soon. 

The Queen of My Dreams is now showing in film festivals and select theatres in the US and Canada. The film has received Canadian Screen Awards for Best Lead Performance in a Drama Film (Amrit Kaur) and Original Song (Qurram Hussain), Best Feature Film at the 2024 Nova Scotia Awards, The Iris Prize for Best Female Performance (Kaur) and Best Canadian Feature Film and Outstanding Performer (Kaur) at the 27 th Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival, and TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten in 2023. It is available to stream on Crave.