Among the events of this end of the festival, Cannes rolled out the red carpet for the very first Pakistani film to integrate its official selection.
Shot in Lahore, director Saim Sadiq's feature debut tells the story of Haider, an introverted young man who accepts the unthinkable: becoming a dancer in an erotic show.
Her encounter with Biba, an eruptive trans woman, will change the course of her existence, hitherto governed by the weight of family traditions.
Presented as part of the Un certain regard section, dedicated to young innovative cinema, "Joyland" unfolds a biting, transgressive scenario that navigates briskly between comedy and drama.
"Yesterday, a Chinese man came back from a trip to Mars. You can't even take the hand of a pretty girl," Biba said to Haider one evening, in the privacy of his room decorated like a box of night.
On the occasion of the first international screening of his film, Pakistani director Saim Sadiq gave an interview to France 24.
#Joyland Speech moved by the director Saim Sadiq for the premiere of a Pakistani film in Cannes!
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— Condor (@CondorFilm) May 23, 2022
France 24: Why did you call the film "Joyland", after the name of this amusement park seen in a scene from the film?
It was not the original idea but this title became obvious during the project.
Joyland is first and foremost my childhood memories, the place where I used to go with my cousins and my friends.
Later, we understood that this park was nothing exceptional but, as children, we were extremely excited to go there and it embodies these memories of joy, innocence and naivety.
This word also refers to the state of the characters who search in the dark and do not know how to manage their desires.
This search, which can be interpreted as a quest for utopia, is undermined by the family environment because, in our country, people are too connected.
Everyone takes care of everyone else's business and the freedom of some can quickly become the prison of others.
The title reflects the contradiction between this unromantic reality and the idea of utopia embodied by Joyland.
In the film, the main character discovers a community of transgender artists through Biba, played by Pakistani trans actress Alina Khan.
How do we view this community in Pakistan?
We could qualify this look as bipolar.
On the one hand, transsexuals are the target of attacks.
Almost every month, we hear in the media about violence against transgender people and they are also very marginalized.
But at the same time, it is a community anchored and very visible in Pakistani society, for a very long time.
Transsexuals do not hide, have never hidden and therefore there is also a form of acceptance and coexistence within society.
In recent years, measures have improved their situation, including a 2018 law that allows everyone to identify their own gender and now allows a third category on identity papers: female, male or non-binary.
This is an incredibly progressive step forward.
Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done on this issue, but things are progressing little by little.
Last year, a news channel aired a transgender presenter for the first time.
It's a big step forward because this person now gives the information every day on the air.
And then, today, we have the first Pakistani film in Cannes, which not only features a transsexual, but a transsexual played by a trans actress, which is still rarely the case today in films that approach this topic.
So, for me, there are a lot of small advances that make this question more complex.
The idea that transsexuality necessarily poses more problems in Pakistan because it is a Muslim country is, in my opinion, too simplistic.
Haider, main character of the movie "Joyland", in full choreography during an erotic show.
© Cannes Film Festival
Before "Joyland", there had never been a Pakistani film selected at Cannes.
How do you explain it?
What can you tell us about the Pakistani film industry today?
Until the 1980s we had a fairly robust film industry, but with the rise to power of the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq, new censorship laws were introduced.
They were so extreme that they led to the death of the sector.
Theaters closed as television grew and became the only way to tell stories on screen.
For the past fifteen years, with democratic progress in the country, the film industry has been making a comeback.
Today we produce between fifteen and twenty films a year on average.
As the industry is still in a renaissance phase, there aren't really any set styles.
We don't yet have established criteria to define what is a commercial film or an auteur film, for example, nor an idea of what style of films can generate money or not.
On a creative level, it's an interesting period that allows filmmakers to experiment and try things without having financial pressure.
Pakistani cinema is going through something of a creative golden age, which will probably evolve into a more structured industry, but it's very exciting right now to make films.
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