\n
![](\"https:\/\/tco-london.transforms.svdcdn.com\/production\/tco\/images\/COTTON-QUEEN-2-_-cFrida-Marzouk_Strange_Bird_2025.jpg?w=1741&h=949&auto=compress%2Cformat%2Cavif&fit=min&dm=1790329339&s=5aa3de470c6ffd76d894801f3141ba2e\")
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
In a\u00a0verdant green field at dusk, teenage girls pull at the ripe heads of cotton stalks, one tuft at a\u00a0time. Between shots of laughing, singing, clapping and jointly cringing at a\u00a0TikTok video, their joy is palpable. This opening scene from\u00a0<\/span>Cotton Queen<\/i><\/a>, a\u00a0new feature written and directed by Sudanese-Russian filmmaker Suzannah Mirghani and produced by <\/span>Strange Bird<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Maneki Films<\/span><\/a>, and <\/span>Philistine Films<\/span><\/a>, is a\u00a0portrait of universally recognised girlhood.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s through this lens of late adolescence that Mirghani chose to explore larger themes of colonialism, neocolonialism and women\u2019s rights in <\/span>Sudan<\/span><\/a>. The story follows the earnestly romantic Nafisa, a\u00a015<\/span>-year-old girl living in a\u00a0Sudanese cotton-farming village. Raised on stories from her grandmother and village matriarch, Al-Sit, of battling British colonisers, she eyes the arrival of a\u00a0young businessman and his genetically modified cotton with suspicion.<\/span><\/p>\n The film is shot with natural light; the scenes are bright, vibrant, backed by humour and a\u00a0soft streak of magical realism. Mirghani says the story is a\u00a0collection of childhood memories from Sudan \u2013 she herself was a\u00a0teenager when she and her family left, and there is a\u00a0simmering nostalgia throughout the film as a\u00a0consequence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>You see a\u00a0very kind of na\u00efve, childlike, magical story, and at the same time, there\u2019s kind of an underlying history of violence that runs through the whole story,\u201d says Mirghani. \u200b\u201c<\/span>And of course, my concern is always women. Sudanese women. I\u00a0don\u2019t think there\u2019s enough about Sudanese women, especially in fiction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n