Take a dead-ordinary Essex-based bloke who works for his dad as a motor mechanic and is raising his small son alone. Show him a beautiful caramel coloured drag queen, but tell him nothing about anything. And hey presto! Something awakens. If you’re a cynic, this is the grand narrative of Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd’s film Unicorns, but in truth, it is much, much more. You can see it on this year’s European Film Festival South Africa, in Johannesburg and Cape Town, until 19 October 2025.

Unicorns presents an understanding of love that reaches beyond the expected and in doing so, pencils in a thoughtful reflection on what a relationship can be, if gender and bias and taboo were not an essential part of the mix. The ordinary bloke in question is Luke (Ben Hardy). The drag queen is Aysha aka Ashiq (Jason Patel). The electricity between them is not faked and the circumstances of their meeting could mask a multitude of misconceptions.

But this is not merely a tale about a relationship. Aysha’s life has a terrifying duality which touches the fabric of deeply observant Muslim culture. She lives in London, her folks and brother are in Manchester, and the schism between her life as a make-up consultant by day and a drag queen by night, and the regimented values espoused at the family home, are stark. Of course, at home, Aysha becomes Ashiq and he is a mommy’s boy who dances to the rules and cowers in the presence of daddy.

Drag queen culture is, however, not all pursed lips and big falsies, as the film reveals. The level of spite and malice, internecine politics and competition between Aysha and her fellow queens is high. And while the physical humour runs rife in various parts of the film, so does the toxicity. In the course of events, it is Luke who discovers the true meaning of give and take in the romance.

It’s an important and unusual tale of benign ordinariness and the extraordinary that hides, terrified, in the closet, but this is no standard queer anthem of a film. It is a tale about the meaning of friendship and how it can become so powerful as to throw taboos to the wind.  

Unicorns is directed by Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd and stars Ben Hardy and Jason Patel in the lead roles. In English, it is part of the 12^th European Film Festival in South Africa, screening at The Bioscope independent cinema in Milpark, Johannesburg, The Labia in Cape Town and Hyde Park NuMetro in Johannesburg, as well as online via the festival’s website, until 19 October 2025.