Victoria Ka Raja follows a performer whose work becomes a living archive—interweaving contemporary drag with the ancient story of Ila and Sudyumna. Through performance, personal reflection, and community, the film considers what it means to carry culture forward while making a path that is entirely one’s own.

At the centre of the film is Badshah, a drag king whose practice creates space for an expression of Indianness that is playful, contemporary, personal, and unapologetically expansive.

A story across time

The film moves between documentary observation and animation, allowing the myth of Ila and Sudyumna to sit alongside Badshah’s present-day performance. Rather than treating mythology as something fixed, Victoria Ka Raja approaches it as a living cultural language—one that can be revisited, interpreted, questioned, and transformed.

The result is both portrait and conversation: between performer and audience, contemporary drag and cultural history, inheritance and reinvention.

Behind the film

Victoria Ka Raja was developed as an intimate short documentary, photographed with a small crew and an observational approach. The production moves between performance, preparation, conversation, and 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.