Fawzia Mirza & Terrie Samundra
Me, My Mom & Sharmila is a feature narrative film inspired by Mirza, her mother, and their relationship. A queer Pakistani girl and her Muslim immigrant mother come of age against the backdrop of their shared love of a Bollywood heroine, taking place in Karachi, Pakistan and Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. The film is rooted in Mirza’s first short film and play of the same name, The Queen of My Dreams, both of which share comedic and heartbreaking stories of being a woman of the South Asian diaspora struggling to reconcile her place in the West. The screenplay adaptation explores the relationship between a young Brown girl, Azra, and her Pakistani mother, Mariam. The film also explores both Azra’s coming-of-age, and that of her Muslim mother; once a bohemian youth in Pakistan, next a wide-eyed newlywed in the West, ultimately an increasingly religious and conservative mother. Through mother and daughter’s mutual love of Bollywood heroine Sharmila Tagore (the ultimate South Asian icon and woman) and Bollywood re-creation/fantasy sequences, we explore female identity, queer identity, mothers and daughters and the experience of immigrant women.