The independent film landscape is not an easy place to be, especially for productions slapped with the “foreign” category title. It’s an arduous task pushing out promo cycles and getting the right voices to back a project you and your team have spent months working on in the blistering heat. Then, imagine, your film gets banned a week before its nationwide rollout. Well, that’s exactly what happened to Saim Sadiq, the director of the acclaimed film, Joyland.
While Joyland has some hope of making it to wider audiences in Pakistan, the emotionally packed film is making international rounds as a film to keep an eye on. With a zoomed in focus on an impossible love story, a family reckoning with its own conservatisms, and what it truly means to foster empathy for the people of Pakistan, Joyland is an unprecedented movie that does not hold back. GAY TIMES speaks to Saim Sadiq to find out more about the film’s layered characters, putting Pakistan in the spotlight, and why trans representation doesn’t always have to be didactic.
Joyland lends itself into
