This time last week, The Guardian reported the transgender star of Joyland, an award-winning Pakistan film that depicts a love affair between a man and a trans woman, was “very sad” at her government’s decision to ban the movie and hoped it will be reversed.
Joyland was banned for its “highly objectionable material” that did “not conform with the social values and moral standards of [Pakistani] society”, according to a religious party leader who was able to force the federal censor board to declare the movie “ineligible for the whole of Pakistan”.
Just days later, after much media attention and outcries on social networks, the Pakistani Government lifted the ban and it was released as advertised on 18 November. Joyland is Pakistan’s official entry for the Academy Awards next year and has one many accolades in the 2022 festival circuit, including the Jury Prize as well as the Queer Palm award at Cannes.
Set in the eastern city of Lahore, Joyland tackles issues of gender and sexuality – taboo topics in Pakistan – through the story of a married man who falls in love with a transgender dancer, played by transgender actress Alina Khan.
The ban was removed “in the wake of persistent complaints received from different quarters”, according to Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province, which originally succumbed to religious pressure from the Jamaat-e-Islami party and approval to screen in the region was revoked. The film passed other censors from different provinces in Pakistan.
Khan, the lead actress in the film, maintains, “there’s nothing against Islam and I don’t understand how Islam can get endangered by mere films.” The 24-year-old added: “The Pakistani trans community was also very upset.”
Aside from the Jamaat-e-Islami party, other conservative Islamic groups called Joyland “repugnant”. But in the end, Salman Sufi, an aide to Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, told the Associated Press, “the decision is a simple yet powerful message that the Government stands by freedom of speech and safeguards it, and cannot allow mere smear campaigns or disinformation to be used as choking creative freedom”.
- Asia Media Centre
