Adelaide Film Festival: Joyland

The first Pakistani film to screen at Cannes, Joyland is a visually layered, heartfelt hybrid family drama/romance that gently hones in on the ways social taboos can restrict our true selves. The happily patriarchal Rana family live in the heart of the metropolitan yet conservative city of Lahore. As they eagerly anticipate the birth of a baby boy to continue the family line, youngest son Haider secretly takes up a job as a background dancer at an erotic theatre where he is drawn to an ambitious trans starlet, Biba. Their impossible love story slowly illuminates the entire Rana family’s desire for a sexual rebellion.