MELBOURNE, August 14, 2022: It was an evening of joy and applause for Salim Sadiq’s ‘Joyland’, once again after Cannes, at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne 2022, with standing ovation and claps as the queer drama won the prestigious ‘Best film from the Subcontinent’ award. The team – Saim Sadiq, Apoorva Charan, actors Alina Khan, Ali Junejo, and Rasti Farooq walked the stage claiming the big honor.
I caught up on the ‘Joyland’ team two days before the huge honor cheered them. At Melbourne Investment Centre, Collins street with a stunning skyline, they talked about this rather timely and bold effort about the Ranas – a happily patriarchal joint family – yearn for the birth of a baby boy to continue the family line, their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for an ambitious trans starlet. Their impossible love story slowly illuminates the entire Rana family’s desire for a sexual rebellion.
– Audio is not the best but auidable.
Earlier, Joyland won the Jury prize, Un Certain Regard & Winner – Queen Palm, Cannes Film Festival. The 126 minutes, 2022 movie (Pakistan, USA). About Joyland, Saim had told The Express Tribune, “Emotionally, observationally, if I’ve seen a vulnerable moment in my mother or aunt, I have inculcated that in Joyland. When you feel, you don’t belong to that boys’ club, how it doesn’t come naturally to you, you start wondering if it makes you any less of a man. When you’re not interested in cricket or having other ‘masculine traits’, you start questioning the notion of masculinity. Why those nuances are so strict? Why do they stifle you unnecessarily? Those things did make their way into the film. Understanding the privilege that comes with being a man also made its way into Joyland.”
The fact that ‘Joyland’ rubbed shoulders with biggies at the IFFM-2022, and won laurels, speaks for itself. The movie competed with Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom from Bhutan, No Land’s Man and Rehana Maryam Noor from Bangladesh, and The Newspaper from Sri Lanka.
