Joyland(2022)
dir. Saim Sadiq
Patriarchy, love and a Lahore theater.
Where to watch: Free on Tubi, Kanopy; PrimeLetterboxd ↗
Haider, the unemployed youngest son of a Lahore family, takes a job as a backup dancer at an erotic theater and falls for the trans star, Biba, while his wife Mumtaz is pushed out of her own job. A patriarch's rules close in on all of them. Pakistan briefly banned its release before reversing; it won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2022.
Why it’s here
The film shows how patriarchy hurts the men who keep it too, without letting any of them off. What's punk is that a queer love story, a trans lead and a wife's interior life sit at the center of a mainstream Pakistani family drama, and the state tried to stop it. What's pedagogical is that it makes the family's roles, duty, shame and money visible as a system, not a set of villains. Contains sexual content.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- Pakistan
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Mohammed Hanif
Everyone wants to kill General Zia. Someone succeeds.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
A Year of Biblical Womanhood
Rachel Held Evans
She followed the rules. The rules lost.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Amal Unbound
Aisha Saeed
The debt wasn't hers. The cage is.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Cracking India
Bapsi Sidhwa
A Lahore girl watches Partition arrive in her neighborhood.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Exit West
Mohsin Hamid
Doors appear that lead to other countries. They leave. Everything changes.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Malinda Lo
1954. Chinatown. A lesbian bar. Everything to lose.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Tamas
Bhisham Sahni
Four days of Partition violence. Every side. No heroes.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Mohsin Hamid
A Pakistani man in New York watches America turn against him.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST