"Joyland" banned in Pakistan. Can it still compete at the Oscars?
Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 1:10PM by Nathaniel R
Saim Sadiq (via Instagram, left) and a memorable shot from his feature debut "Joyland" (right)
Censorship has been part of the history of art forever. The ways in which we think of censorship in Hollywood cinema usually involve ratings boards or production codes... self-censorship from the industry to prevent outside censorship from the government. It's less a case of banning art than an attempt to keep storytellers in line with accepted norms, however conservative those norms might be in their time. When the story of censorship visibly collides with the Oscar race, though, it's usually across the border and in the Best International Feature Film category. Now we have another of those stories via Pakistan's Oscar submission Joyland.
The movie, a brilliant feature debut from 31 year old filmmaker Saim Sadiq, is a drama about a young husband in Lahore who falls for a trans performer after being hired by a local dance theater. It first came to international attention when it premiered at Cannes (the first Pakistani movie to do so) and won both Un Certain Regard and the Queer Palm. Just a week before its premiere in Pakistan its release was denied, endangering its Oscar run. Questions naturally crop out like "Why would a country submit a film and then ban it?" and "Can it still compete?" so let's answer those...
