The Unicorn: A cross-cultural love story explores the secret world of LGBTQ+

A love story between a white, heterosexual, working-class mechanic and a South Asian Muslim drag queen sheds light on underground LGBTQ+ subcultures.

The feature film “Unicorn” takes viewers to the heart of the secretive so-called “gaygeian” scene, a combination of the words gay and Asian, and introduces them to some fascinating drag queens.

“Many of the queens are closeted, only able to be themselves on weekends, they use false names and many are shunned by their families,” said Sally El Hossaini, who co-directed the film with his partner James Krishna Floyd.

“On the surface [the gaysian scene is] “It’s very bright, very glamorous… but underneath it all there’s actually a very raw, real and pretty hardcore world,” Floyd added.

“They are a minority within a minority. They are attacked and rejected from all sides: by mainstream culture, by primarily South Asian communities, by primarily religious communities, and by the mainstream LGBTQ+ community.”

Floyd, who also wrote the screenplay, said he was keen to explore the “fluidity of identity” with El Hossaini, who is half Welsh and half Egyptian.

“Personally, as someone who is half Indian and half British and has had a sexually fluid experience, mainstream culture always puts us all into very neat little boxes,” he said.

“It’s very frustrating and I feel restricted.”

He said he had “always known about the gay scene” but was introduced to it by his friend Asifa Raholl, who in 2014 became the first Muslim drag queen in the UK to speak publicly about her work.

Lahore is the producer of the film.

“Everything in the film is based on Asifa’s experience, my own experience, or the experiences of South Asian drag queens that I’m very familiar with now. It all comes from reality,” Floyd said.

Ashik (played by Jason Patel) works at the shop by day, but at night he transforms into drag queen Aisha, dancing for a primarily South Asian LGBTQ+ audience.

The love story begins when single father and mechanic Luke (played by Bohemian Rhapsody and former EastEnders actor Ben Hardy) stumbles into an underground club where Aisha is performing and the two share a kiss before realising she is a drag queen.

Patel, who plays Aisha, is not a real-life drag queen, but many of the supporting cast members are.

After a casting call was sent out on social media, El Hossaini and Floyd received audition tapes from several South Asian drag queens.

“A lot of those tapes were very moving,” El Hossaini said.

“Some of them were like, ‘I don’t care if I got this role or not. The fact that this character was created and exists is what got me noticed,'” she said.

“Someone was recording the tape in the bathroom, but they were speaking very quietly because their family was at home and they didn’t want to be heard.”

“It was a moment that really reminded me why we make this film,” Floyd added.

“If I’m making this film for anyone, it’s for the gay community… because there’s never been a film about them before, much less a fictional feature film.”

Floyd and El Hossaini, who live in London and have a son together, first met when Floyd starred in El Hossaini’s feature film debut, My Brother the Devil.

The Unicorn marks Floyd’s directorial debut and the pair’s third collaboration.

What is it like making a film with your partner?

“We first met through work, so we had a creative connection before we started dating,” El Hossaini said.

“When you do what we do and you work so hard, we can support each other and lift each other up.”

Floyd began working on Unicorns nine years ago, and the project was “as old as our son, so it was really like a child growing up in our family,” she said.

“It just felt so natural and right for us to come together and create something together,” she added.

El Hossaini, whose mother is Welsh and father is Egyptian, was born in Swansea and grew up in Cairo before returning to Wales at 16 to study at UWC Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan.

The Unicorn is supported by Ffilm Cymru Wales and will have a special screening at Green Man festival in Powys next month.

“The industry often sees my Egyptian side and sees me as an Arab, so I’ve always been given a lot of projects that have an Arab perspective,” El Hossaini said.

“But I’m Arab and I’m Welsh too – it’s definitely in my bones, my blood and a part of me and I think the time is right to take on a Welsh project.”

Floyd said they both had been frustrated by the narrow range of stories being adapted to the screen and wanted to rectify that.

“The industry is not very kind to minorities, and certainly not to minorities within minorities,” he said.

“It’s totally disproportionate. And speaking as a half-white person, how many more movies do we need to see with privileged, white, middle-class, cisgender, heteronormative men as protagonists? Do we need more of these? No.”

He said one of the great things about storytelling is that it “sheds a little bit of light on communities that we don’t hear about as much.”

“There is more that unites us than divides us,” El Hossaini added.

The Unicorn is currently in cinemas across the UK and Ireland.