Activist. Actor. Director. Producer. Playwright. Screenwriter. Fawzia Mirza is the quintessential multi-hyphenate, multi-disciplinary artist. An award-winning Pakistani-Canadian-American writer-director for movie, tv, and the stage, Mirza’s physique of labor spans a few decade, together with documentary shorts “The Queen of My Desires,” “Reclaiming Pakistan,” and “The Streets Are Ours.”
Named amongst Unbiased Journal’s 10 Filmmakers to Watch and IndieWire’s High 10 Creatives, Mirza additionally writes, directs, produces, and infrequently stars in quite a lot of narrative movies. Mirza’s first function movie as a screenwriter, “Signature Transfer,” served as a starring automobile for her in 2017. The movie takes pages out of Mirza’s precise life story. A former litigator herself, Mirza performs Zaynab, a Chicago-based lawyer whose lately widowed mom involves reside along with her. Comedy and drama ensue as Zaynab tries to cover her burgeoning relationship with one other girl whereas additionally pursuing lucha-style wrestling.
“I really like the approaching out story,” Mirza advised them. in 2020. “I do know, persons are like, ‘Oh, I’m so bored with watching that film’ or ‘I’m so bored with studying that guide about somebody’s popping out.’ I wish to see these tales as a result of we don’t have sufficient of them.”
Along with starring within the award-winning and Emmy-nominated collection “Her Story,” Mirza has additionally headlined her personal autobiographical one-woman stage manufacturing, “Me, My Mother & Sharmila.” She has not been shy about how the real-life issues along with her mom, which arose when she got here out, have knowledgeable her as an individual and an artist. Her function screenplay adaptation by the identical title was accepted into the 2020 Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant Writers Studio and Filmmaker Lab.
Mirza later wrote and directed an all-Canadian quick, “Noor & Layla,” in affiliation with CBC. The story facilities round two girls within the technique of breaking apart. A movie that includes an interracial Muslim couple, even now, is pretty unusual, as Daniel Reynolds at Advocate talked about throughout a chat with Mirza in 2021. “My work facilities voices of shade, queer voices, Muslim voices, girls’s voices,” Mirza replied. “To me, this interracial relationship is a traditional reflection of the group round me.” She additionally desires to dispel the misguided notions that many minorities and marginalized group members usually face when telling distinctive tales in an in any other case white-washed, cishet cinema panorama. “Queer Muslim love is gorgeous,” she advised Advocate. “Muslims usually are not a monolith; we are available all varieties and we follow in myriad methods. We’re multitudes.”
Certainly, Mirza seamlessly tells queer romance tales with numerous characters, as evidenced by one among her most up-to-date narrative shorts, “Syed Household Xmas Eve Recreation Evening.” The title is a mouthful, but it surely serves as a comedic precursor to the larger-than-life world the place three Pakistani-American (probably -Canadian) sisters have a good time – you guessed it – Christmas Eve with foolish, over-the-top, household video games.
When the youngest sister, Noor, brings her nonbinary Puerto Rican associate, Luz, to satisfy everybody for the primary time, a really awkward gauntlet is thrown by Noor’s oldest sister, Soraya, to see if Luz is admittedly “The One.” Rounding out the sibling trio is center sister Kiran who, naturally, simply desires to maintain the peace. In only one wayward night, all 4 people are examined.
The idea originated with Mirza’s artistic associate, author and actor Kausar Mohammed. Mohammed primarily based the script on an expertise she had bringing her personal vital different house to the household, solely she imagined an expanded, zanier situational comedy. The result’s a enjoyable, relatable romp of a brief movie, the place the viewers is left wanting a bit extra of those characters in different on a regular basis conditions. From starting to finish, the Syed household is enjoyable to look at, and this quick movie may simply be the seed that conjures up a function or collection.
“We wish to heart tales on queer Muslims of shade,” Mirza advised CBC, talking of her collaborative efforts with Mohammed. “We wish to work on this business in a means that feels uplifting quite than degrading, inclusive quite than unique, and might in the end be an precise reflection of the spectrum of our group.”
The pandemic and household well being points compelled Mirza to reassess whether or not she may really break up her focus between duties at house and directing “Syed Household Xmas Eve Recreation Evening” in January 2021. She even provided the producers an out: In the event that they wanted to seek out one other director to maneuver the challenge ahead, she would perceive.
Thankfully, Mohammed and their producing workforce had been in a position to push again filming. They had been adamant that there was nobody else who may direct it, and that religion in Mirza has paid off with the movie touchdown on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant, BFI Flare, and OutFest.
“I’m reminded of the significance of loving the work you’re making,” Mirza advised CBC. “Make it for you, and to your values. Make it with love, and make it with individuals you like. Make artwork from a spot of intense honesty and one of the best will come. Not everybody will perceive you or your work… However that’s okay. As a queer Muslim, I’ve gotten used to that.”
“Signature Transfer” is obtainable on VOD. “Noor & Layla” can now be streamed on-line. Study extra about Mirza’s latest and upcoming tasks at fawziamirza.com.
Supply: Women And Hollywood