THE QUEEN OF MY DREAMS - Mark Reviews Movies

The Queen of My Dreams, Willa / Product of Culture

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 19, 2025

The daughter and mother of The Queen of My Dreams seem as unlike as can be. Watching them even talk on the phone appears to be a struggle for both of them, so when they're put in a trying situation and have to spend more time together than they have for years, the central question of writer/director Fawzia Mirza's debut feature initially might be whether or not their relationship can survive.

Instead, Mirza uses this chance, a tragedy for both women, to take a step back, look at both of these characters for who they are and were, and finds what connects them more than separates them. Azra (Amrit Kaur) and her mother Mariam (Nimra Bucha) probably know or at least sense that last part, even if they can't fully understand it or say it to each other, but by the end of this generation-spanning story, we have witnessed that reality.

The present tense of the narrative is set in Toronto in 1999, where and when Azra, an aspiring actress who's currently working on her master's degree in Shakespeare, lives with her girlfriend Rachel (Kya Mosey). Showing the girlfriend her favorite Bollywood movie, Azra spends most of it singing along to the tunes and explaining the particulars of the filmmaking style (some of which are cleverly incorporated later in the actual film). More to the point, Azra loves this movie because she and her mother used to watch it while she was growing up, and sure enough, Mariam herself, preparing for a trip to Pakistan to visit family, pops in the VHS tape of the movie around the same time and on her own.

None of that pleasant nostalgia comes through, however, when Azra and Mariam end up on the phone together before the trip. That only happens because Azra's father Hassan (Hamza Haq), who has a nice rapport with his daughter, basically forces Azra to have a conversation with her mother. Mariam, a devout Muslim, doesn't seem too happy with anything her daughter is currently doing, and one imagines, as Azra obviously does, that she'd be even more outraged if her daughter let Mariam know that the young woman living with her is more than just a "roommate." The call ends, and Azra decides to screen all of her incoming calls to avoid yet another uncomfortable talk.

Soon enough, Azra is on a plane to Karachi with her older brother Zahid (Ali A. Kazmi). Hassan had a heart attack and has died. He's to be buried in Pakistan.

With Azra's arrival in the country, Mirza's screenplay divides itself between the present, as the family prepares for the funeral, and the past, which itself is eventually split into two distinct stories. The first of those belongs to a younger Miriam, who is notably played by Kaur, as well. It's 1969, and while Karachi itself doesn't look much different, the atmosphere of the place certainly feels that way.

The key perhaps, beyond the sweet love story that develops between a young Mariam and Hassan (who's still and always played by Haq, reflecting one of those aforementioned conventions of Bollywood filmmaking), is the tension between Mariam and her own mother Amira (Gul-e-Rana). This daughter wants freedom and independence, quickly latching on to the idea of becoming an air hostess as soon as she hears about it—the chance to meet people and travel the world and make her own living. This mother, however, believes her only child's role is to marry a man—arranged or at least approved by her parents—who can provide for her and will live close enough to home so that the family can remain whole.

All of these conflicts, essentially, come down to ones between tradition and independence, self-fulfillment, and other similar concepts (Everything with the funeral, as Azra is excluded from any proper farewell to her beloved father, is especially potent). Mirza's script plays primarily as a string of slice-of-life vignettes around such ideas.

It's filled with irony, too, especially in the depictions of these mother-daughter bonds and the way, as Hassan half-jokes to his wife after that difficult phone conversation between her and their daughter, that children will inevitably become like one of their parents, whether they want to or can imagine it or not. Such a notion would be unthinkable to this young Mariam, who, for example, begins lying to her mother about Hassan's plans to become a doctor and move to Canada.

As we know Mariam in her role as Azra's strict and critical mother, however, that shift is an inevitable one. The second half of the flashbacks are set 20 years later in Nova Scotia, where Mariam (now played by Bucha), Hassan, and their two children are still becoming acclimatized to their respective lives. A younger Azra (played by Ayana Maji) is starting to realize that she's attracted to girls (That moment, just as with a fantasy of a younger Mariam recognizing that she loves Hassan, is an homage to the daughter and mother's favorite movie). Meanwhile, Mariam starts selling plastic leftover containers and, coming as quite the shock to Azra, hanging up on her mother when their own conversations become too much for her to handle.

All of this is really to describe how Mirza's film plays—as a thoughtful, sympathetic observation of a mother and daughter coming of age at different points in their lives, while revealing to us how alike they were and, maybe, still are. The Queen of My Dreams is a surprisingly rich story, then, because it focuses on its characters and lets the ideas flow from them, their experiences, and their evolutions over time.

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