Factory25 shared the official trailer for Queens of the Qing Dynasty, the Canadian independent film starring Sarah Walker as a teenager who has been hospitalized following a suicide attempt, and Ziyin Zheng as a genderqueer volunteer assigned to watch her in the hospital.

Also starring in the film are Wendy Wishart, Jana Reddick, Yao Xue, Cherlena “Sassi” Brake, Reg MacDonald, Carl Getto, Nidhin KH, and Rony Robson.

Written and directed by Ashley McKenzie, Queens of the Qing Dynasty world premiered at Berlin International Film Festival, and was an official selection of Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival; and will be released in theaters on May 5 at Metrograph Theater in New York, expanding to select cities.

In a remote small town, a neurodivergent teen forms an unlikely rapport with an international student from Shanghai volunteering at the hospital where they are a patient. Between the two, a bond forms, cemented by their candid conversations, nightly text messages, and exchange of their deepest secrets. The boundaries of their friendship quickly expand into something special, altering their inner alchemy.

Queens of the Qing Dynasty is a queer story that breaches the absurd and poetic, the platonic and the romantic. Both intimate and intense, it explores the intrinsic beauty and innate flaws of what it is to be human, the profundity of connection, and the vortex of mental illness. The electronic music score blurs between cinema foley and sound design to create a feeling of an alternate plane. Queens of the Qing Dynasty is an affectionate ode to women, asexuals, and neurodiverse and genderqueer individuals who exist beyond the norms of society by writer and director Ashley McKenzie.

Watch the official trailer for Queens of the Qing Dynasty.