Unemployed and living in the emasculated shadow of his father and older brother, Haider, a shy, softspoken man, eagerly accepts a job at a theatre as a backup dancer for Biba, a trans woman trying to make her way as an erotic dancer. Hiding the truth of his work from his family—who have secrets of their own—Haider gradually falls into an intimate affair with Biba. Meanwhile, his wife, Mumtaz, a skilled beautician who takes pride in her work and role as breadwinner, feels stifled and unfulfilled with Haider and his father’s expectations that she will bear him a son.
This poignant, sharply droll debut from director Saim Sadiq was the first Pakistani film at Cannes, where it won the Queer Palme Award. Joyland weaves a rich tapestry of complex characters, finding moments of intimacy and grace as it explores a patriarchal family bursting at the seams with sexual repression and buckling under cultural pressures and expectations of gender and tradition.
Tartly funny and plungingly sad in equal measure, this is nuanced, humane queer filmmaking.”—Guy Lodge, Variety
Jury Prize, Cannes 2022 (Un Certain Regard)
Community Partner
Ali Junejo, Alina Khan, Rasti Farooq, Sarwat Gilani, Sohail Sameer, Salman Peerzada, Sania Saeed
Pakistan
2022
In Urdu and Punjabi with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Train Dreams
A lovely, ruminative movie set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century. Robert (Joel Edgerton) is a lumberjack, a taciturn man who comes to appreciate the life slipping between his fingers.
Caravaggio
In the latest from Exhibition on Screen, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky shed light not only on Caravaggio's paintings, but his life, often kept half-hidden in the same chiaroscuro tones he shaded his masterpieces with.
Köln 75
The true story behind the greatest solo concert in jazz history, this is Keith Jarrett's legendary 1975 Köln Concert — as organized by 18-year-old rebel music promoter Vera Brandes. Fun, inventive and feminist, it's the Bend It Like Beckham of jazz films.
La Belle at the Movies + Apostles of Cinema
Cecilia Zoppelletto's lyrical documentary examines the fate of cinephilia in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital city, currently without a single operating cinema. + Apostles of Cinema (Tanzania, 17 min)
Wisdom of Happiness
An audience with the Dalia Lama, who, at 90, looks back on his life and shares the tenets of Buddhism as a practical guide to surviving the 21st Century with joy and compassion.
Left-Handed Girl
Co-written and edited by Sean Baker (Anora), Shi-Ching Tsou's heartwarming solo feature debut follows a single mom in Taipei who is too consumed with her noodle stand to keep tabs on her five-year-old daughter's burgeoning shoplifting habit.
Credits
Executive Producer
Riz Ahmed, Ramin Bahrani, William Olsson, Jen Goyne Blake, Tiffany Boyle, Elsa Ramo, Oleg Dubson, Kathrin Lohmann, Hari Charana Prasad, Sukanya Puvvula, Owais Ahmed
Producer
Apoorva Charan, Sarmad Khoosat, Lauren Mann, Kathryn M. Moseley, Oliver Ridge, April Shih, Katharina Otto-Bernstein
Screenwriter
Saim Sadiq
Cinematography
Joe Saade
Editor
Jasmin Tenucci, Saim Sadiq
Production Design
Kanwal Khoosat
Original Music
Abdullah Siddiqui
Director
Saim Sadiq
Saim Sadiq’s film Joyland (2022) is the first Pakistani feature to be screened at Cannes. His film Darling (2019), which won the Orizzonti Prize for Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival, was also an official selection at TIFF and won a Special Jury Mention award at SXSW. His previous short film Nice Talking to You (2018) was also an official selection at SXSW, as well as other festivals. He is currently writing the film adaptation of the novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.