One good season on a high-school basketball team is all it takes for a quiet, overlooked kid to become the center of his father's entire world, whether he wants that attention or not.
What is Somewhere in Queens about?
Leo and Angela Russo have built a settled, unglamorous life in Queens, hemmed in on all sides by an Italian-American family that has an opinion on everything they do. Their son, nicknamed Sticks, has spent most of his life in the background of that loud household, until a run of success on his high-school basketball team suddenly puts him at the center of it. Leo, sensing a chance he never had for himself, throws himself into his son's new visibility with a force that starts pulling the family apart rather than holding it together. The film treats that shift gently, tracking how a father's good intentions curdle into pressure, and how a family used to talking over each other has to actually listen to know what's happening to one of its own.
About the cast
Ray Romano plays Leo and also directs, opposite Laurie Metcalf as Angela, with Jacob Ward as Sticks and Sadie Stanley, Jennifer Esposito, and Deirdre Friel rounding out the extended family and neighborhood around them.
Context & significance
Somewhere in Queens marks Ray Romano's feature directorial debut, and the 2023 film draws on the comedy-drama register he's long been associated with, using a close, unglamorous New York setting to ground a story that's ultimately about a father learning where his own ambitions end and his son's begin. The extended-family ensemble gives the film room to balance its more serious thread about parental overreach with the kind of overlapping, talked-over-each-other comedy that comes from a house full of relatives who all think they know best.
Watching Somewhere in Queens on Ktime
Somewhere in Queens streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles both offered, so viewers can pick whichever suits them. Reading the page is free; watching the film requires a K-Time account login, on a platform designed around a Farsi-first experience for Persian-speaking viewers wherever they are.