Victoria Ka Raja is an intimate portrait of Badshah, the drag persona of Victoria-based performer Kai Rae Khushi.

Born and raised in Mumbai, Khushi moved to Canada seeking a life beyond the future they felt had already been decided for them. Drag became a space where identity could be rebuilt on their own terms, a place to explore masculinity, performance, culture, and the parts of themselves that had not always felt possible to express openly.

Through intimate interviews, performance footage, and observational moments, the documentary follows Badshah’s evolution from Khushi’s first encounter with drag to becoming a visible presence within Canada’s South Asian performance community. The film looks at what it means to create a masculine stage persona while carrying the weight of cultural expectations, migration, queerness, and self-discovery.

The film moves between documentary observation and animation, allowing the myth of Ila and Sudyumna to sit alongside Badshah’s present-day performance. The sequence creates a bridge between past and present, placing Badshah’s performance within a much longer cultural history.

Director's Statement

My relationship to Victoria Ka Raja is deeply personal. As an Indian filmmaker, I was drawn to Badshah’s story not simply because it was about drag, but because it was about building a version of yourself that feels powerful, visible, and free.

I was interested in the point where cultural expectation and self-expression meet, and in how that tension can become something creative rather than restrictive. Growing up, I rarely saw this kind of relationship to Indianness reflected on screen. Badshah represents a possibility I did not often see: the ability to live openly, express identity without restriction, and define what being Indian can look like on your own terms.

Victoria Ka Raja was developed as an intimate short documentary with an animated opening sequence created in collaboration with animator Iker Jarquin. The film premiered at Justice4Reel Film Festival in Edmonton and was subsequently selected for the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, and at the International South Asian Film Festival.