Joyland (2022)
★★★½ — Joyland (2022)
Pakistan's film industry has never had an especially high international profile, at least not in the way that, say, Iranian or South Korean cinema has managed to build devoted audiences in the West over recent decades. That makes Joyland (2022) all the more striking an arrival. Written and directed by Saim Sadiq, the film was Pakistan's submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and it became the first Pakistani film to compete in the main selection at Cannes, where it won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section. It also, famously, faced a brief domestic ban before its Pakistani release, with the country's censor board initially objecting to its content on the grounds of what it described as "highly objectionable material." The ban was overturned, which was a small but meaningful victory, though it tells you something about the environment in which Sadiq was working.
Sadiq, making his feature debut here after a short film career, co-produced Joyland with KHOOSAT FILMS, the production company founded by actor and director Sarmad Khoosat. The film is set in Lahore and centres on the youngest son of a traditional family, Haider, whose household is quietly dominated by the expectation that his wife will produce a male heir. When Haider secretly takes a job as a backup dancer in an erotic dance theatre, he finds himself drawn to Biba, the troupe's transgender lead performer. The premise sits at the meeting point of family drama, romance, and social commentary, a combination that, handled clumsily, could easily tip into melodrama or, worse, become a kind of issue-film checklist. Whether Sadiq avoids that fate is precisely what this review addresses. For another romance that refuses the easy route, it is worth looking at the site's piece on Call Me by Your Name, and the review of Mustang covers similarly uncomfortable ground around family, gender, and the weight of social expectation in a non-Western context.
The cast is a mix of established Pakistani talent and newer faces. Ali Junejo plays Haider with a kind of inward, restrained quality that suits the character's position, a man caught between what he has been told his life should look like and what he is actually feeling. Rasti Farooq, as his wife Mumtaz, was already known to Pakistani television audiences, and she brings a grounded, lived-in quality to a role that could otherwise function purely as the put-upon spouse. Sarwat Gilani and Salmaan Peerzada round out the family ensemble, both polished but unremarkable in roles that serve the film's broader architecture. The performance that attracted the most attention internationally, and rightly so, is that of Alina Khan as Biba. Khan is a transgender actress, and her casting was a conscious choice on Sadiq's part rather than an afterthought, which gives the film a degree of authenticity that similar productions have sometimes lacked. At 127 minutes, Joyland takes its time, and whether that pace works in its favour is a matter the review below addresses directly.
A-Z World Movie Tour Pakistan Joyland is a quietly revolutionary film. A rare and courageous piece of Pakistani cinema that tackles gender, desire, and repression with remarkable sensitivity and visual grace. It’s beautifully acted, especially by Alina Khan in a breakthrough performance as Biba, a trans woman navigating love, dignity, and survival in a society that refuses to see her fully. But the film isn’t "about" being trans, as much of the marketing suggested, it's one of many storylines in this film. About the cages we’re born into, whether through gender, family, or tradition. And it’s about the quiet, desperate attempts to break free. The story centres on Haider, a man in a strained marriage, who takes a job as a backup dancer in an underground cabaret and finds himself drawn to Biba. His journey (from dutiful husband to someone questioning everything he’s been taught) is handled with subtlety and empathy. Meanwhile, his wife, played with heartbreaking restraint by Rasti Farooq, is also quietly rebelling in her own way, longing for autonomy in a home that treats her like a housekeeper. These parallel arcs are the film’s greatest strength. Two people, trapped in different ways, reaching for something more. And yet, for all its power, Joyland tries to do too much. It wants to critique patriarchy, explore queer identity, dissect arranged marriage, comment on economic hardship, and examine performance, both on stage and in life. Each theme is handled with care, but together, they crowd the narrative. This could have been 3 movies. The film never feels exploitative or inauthentic, but it does feel overstuffed. Moments that should land with emotional weight get lost in the sheer volume of ideas. You’re left admiring its ambition, but wishing it had focused on fewer threads to go deeper. Still, what it achieves is remarkable, not just for Pakistani cinema, but for global storytelling. It’s bold, tender, and unafraid of complexity. It doesn’t offer easy answers, but it asks the right questions. Joyland isn’t a perfect film, but it’s an important one and a sign of a new, fearless voice in filmmaking. Just shy of greatness, but undeniably powerful.
I came away from Joyland feeling much the same tension between admiration and mild frustration, and I suspect that tension is actually the honest response to a film that is trying to do something genuinely difficult. There are sequences here that I keep returning to, particularly anything involving Mumtaz, whose storyline felt, for me, like the most quietly devastating thread in the whole picture. The film's ambition is its greatest quality and its most persistent problem, and not every director gets to wrestle with that particular dilemma on a debut feature. If you enjoy cinema that takes you somewhere unfamiliar and asks questions it does not intend to answer for you, it is well worth your time. Not quite the masterpiece it nearly is, but close enough to matter.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2022 | Watched: 2025-08-09
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Joyland (2022) on YouTube
Where to watch
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