In Fawzia Mirza’s feature directorial debut, The Queen of My Dreams, the more things change, the more things stay the same. The film centers on the strained relationship between Azra (Amrit Kaur) and her mother, Mariam (Kaur in the 1960s, pulling double duty, and Nimra Bucha in the ‘80s and ‘90s), which is further tested when Azra’s father dies suddenly. Told mostly in two timelines—a lush, colorful, and warm ‘60s Karachi, Pakistan, and a duller by comparison ‘90s Nova Scotia, Canada—Azra comes to understand Mariam’s life through the technicolor flashbacks and fantasy sequences that recreate scenes from Sharmila Tagore’s hit 1969 Hindi-language film Aradhana (a favorite of her mother’s).
As Azra comes to learn, Mariam’s adolescence was marked by acts of rebellion that are synonymous with the era in South Asia but were rarely shown on screen. “The '60s were the '60s all over the world, not just North America,” Mirza tells Marie Claire on a Zoom call a few days before the film’s June 20 theatrical release. “The music, fashion, and romance—these vibes were happening all over.” In the film’s flashbacks, Mariam wears modern clothing (shimmering mini dresses, polka-dot headbands, and a two-piece bikini that Mirza says was inspired by Tagore’s boundary-pushing 1966 Filmfare magazine cover), dances at nightclubs, and falls in love with a doctor who has his sights on moving abroad. It’s the latter that causes a rift between Mariam and her own mother, who takes her daughter’s eventual relocation to Canada personally. It’s a trauma that Mariam carries forward and eventually inflicts on her daughter when she reacts poorly to Azra’s lesbian identity—a sharp contrast to the carefree attitude Mariam held in her youth.
