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Cross-cultural love story explores secret LGBTQ+ world

6 26
20.07.2024

A love story between a white, heterosexual, working-class mechanic and a South Asian Muslim drag queen is shining a light on an underground LGBTQ subculture.

Feature film Unicorns takes the viewer to the heart of the highly secretive so-called "gaysian" scene - an amalgamation of the words gay and Asian - and introduces its glamorous drag queens.

"A lot of the queens are closeted and only have a certain number of hours on a weekend where they can actually be themselves, a lot use pseudonyms and have been ostracised from their families," said Sally El Hosaini who co-directed the film with her partner James Krishna Floyd.

"On the surface [the gaysian scene is] extremely bright, very attractive... but underneath it's actually a very gritty, real and quite a hardcore world," added Floyd.

"They're a minority within a minority... they're getting attacked and rejected from all sides, from mainstream culture, from South Asian communities for the most part, from their religious communities for the most part and from the mainstream LGBTQ community as well."

Floyd, who also wrote the screenplay, said he and El Hosaini - who is half Welsh and half Egyptian - were keen to explore "fluid identities".

"For me personally as a half Indian, half English guy who has had sexually fluid experiences... mainstream culture is always putting all of us in very neat little boxes," he said.

"I find that very frustrating and just so limiting."

He said he had "always........

© BBC


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