A mother-daughter tale bridging a generation gap between conservative religious upbringing in Pakistan and rebellious independence in rural Nova Scotia.

| Oct 15, 2024

The Queen of my Dreams is a very enjoyable film that hides its depths, a very meaningful debut for its writer/director.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 20, 2024

While the constant cross-cutting is disorienting, the film overflows with textures of life in multiple generations of this Pakistani-Canadian family. And what emerges is a richly detailed look at the threads that hold loved ones together.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 17, 2024

Mizra’s debut often feels like it’s trying to be multiple features at once.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 17, 2024

This peppy first feature by Fawzia Mirza has a boisterous energy and toe-tapping use of music reminiscent of Maryam Keshavarz’s similarly themed, Sundance audience award-winning The Persian Version.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 16, 2024

Kaur really is the film’s revelation: her Azra is funny, spiky and gloriously unruly.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 11, 2024

What lifts Mirza’s film above the pack is that it is alive with colour and music, her characters are endearing and, while a little fragmented towards the end, the writer/director at least makes sure it’s a pleasure to reach that point.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 11, 2024

There is a beautiful film to be found in Mizra’s work, but it’s hard to praise her technical skills as a director when her narrative so blatantly holds back from its audience.

| Sep 9, 2024

Writer-director Fawzia Mirza makes an entertaining and impressive feature debut, digging into pieces of her own identity to craft a great story that leaves a lasting impression.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 27, 2024

The Queen of My Dreams dares us to dare, inspires us to connect, and, above all, reminds us to call our moms more often.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jul 12, 2024

"Filled with heart, and gives us hope for what the future of storytelling looks like."

| Jul 9, 2024

With all that thematic, temporal, geographic and linguistic hopping, one would expect "Queen" to fly, but instead it drags, held back by average performances and tonally and stylistically challenged direction.

| Original Score: 1.75/5 | Apr 10, 2024

It’s refreshing to see such a joyous film move the needle forward.

| Mar 24, 2024

It's Kaur, though, whose praises should be sung, finding a fine line between two uniquely realized people and seeing that correlation shared outside of the familial connections.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 22, 2024

The film glows with colour, music, and imagination, and a lively lead character we are delighted to follow. A promising debut feature by a writer-director with flair.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 22, 2024

Perhaps it’s a case of living with a project for too long. Or maybe it’s a case of a story that doesn’t quite morph so easily from one medium to another.

| Mar 22, 2024

Best of all in this film, when the queens dream, they generously bring us along for the ride.

| Mar 21, 2024

Fawzia Mirza’s dazzling debut feature mines joy, humour, and spirit from the well-worn subject of fraught mother-daughter relationships.

| Original Score: A | Mar 20, 2024

With “The Queen of My Dreams,” Mirza proves herself to be a gifted storyteller and filmmaker who will hopefully share many cinematic stories with us for years to come.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 18, 2024

The result is an occasionally uneven yet generally satisfying depiction of romance, mourning, and mother-daughter relationships against a vivid backdrop of timeless Muslim traditions and ever-shifting South Asian cultural dynamics.

| Mar 14, 2024