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Trans-themed film dazzles Cannes in Pakistan debut
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Pakistani director Saim Sadiq (third right), along with the cast and producer of the film 'Joyland' arrive for the film's screening at the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 22, 2022. (AFP/Patricia de Melo Moreira)
T
he first-ever Pakistani entry in a Cannes Film Festival competition has left audiences slack-jawed and admiring of its daring portrait of a transgender dancer in the Muslim country.
Joyland by director Saim Sadiq, a tale of sexual revolution, tells the story of the youngest son in a patriarchal family who is expected to produce a baby boy with his wife but joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for the troupe's director, a trans woman.
The Cannes opening night's audience gave Joyland a standing ovation, Variety lauding the movie as "so fresh, we're continuously surprised", while Deadline called it "thoughtful, well performed and engrossing".
Part of the surprise stemmed from the discovery by many at Cannes that Pakistan became one the first nations to give legal protection against discrimination to transgender people.
In 2009, Pakistan legally recognised a third sex, and in 2018, the first transgender passport was issued.
"Pakistan is very schizophrenic, almost bipolar," director Saim Sadiq told AFP in an interview.
"You get, of course, prejudice and some violence against a particular community on the one hand, but you also get this very progressive law which basically allows everyone to identify their own gender, and also identifies a third gender," he said.
