‘I used to worship my mother,” confides the voiceover. “I thought she was perfect. I tried to be like her, but I wasn’t.” You’d need a heart of stone not to be moved, even just the slightest, by this confident debut from Canadian director Fawzia Mirza. Funny and warm, her film tells the story of a young gay Pakistani Canadian aspiring actor, Azra (Amrit Kaur), and her complicated relationship with her mother. It slips just a little too easily into the generic pigeonholing of first generation south Asian narratives, but rattles along with fun and energy.
It’s 1999 in Toronto and Azra is showing her “roommate” (in actual fact her girlfriend) her favourite movie, the 1969 Indian musical Aradhana, which she watched on repeat with her mum as a kid. An awkward phone-call home shows how strained that relationship has become. Azra’s mum, Mariam (played by the gorgeous Pakistani actor Nimra Bucha), doesn’t hide her disapproval. “I tried so hard to make her into a good Muslim,” she despairs. But flashbacks to 1960s Karachi show Mariam in her 20s swinging with the best of them, wearing a minidress and sinking martinis. In a sweet touch, Mariam is played as a young woman by Kaur.
What turned Azra’s mum into a middle-aged conservative? We find that out in a second set of flashbacks (which feels like one too many), this time to 1989. Azra is 12 (now played by Ayana Manji) and the family have emigrated to Canada, where mum Mariam has ambitions in Tupperware. All the strands come together in the present day, when Azra’s dad Hassan (Hamza Haq) has a heart attack while on holiday in Pakistan. Travelling back on a dry flight to the country, Azra demands hard liquor from the shocked flight attendant. It’s a funny scene, and Kaur really is the film’s revelation: her Azra is funny, spiky and gloriously unruly.
• The Queen of My Dreams is in UK cinemas from 13 September.
