Joyland (2022) Review – A Quiet, Daring Landmark from Lahore
Pakistani cinema rarely gets to speak to the world in its own voice, on its own terms, without first being translated into a headline about controversy. Joyland managed something harder. Before it was argued about at home, it was celebrated abroad, becoming the first Pakistani film ever selected for the Cannes Film Festival, where it won both the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard and the Queer Palm in 2022. It later became Pakistan’s submission for the Academy Awards and reached the Oscar shortlist, another first for the country.
Strip away the history, though, and a more important question remains: is it actually a good film? Our answer is yes, and not in a dutiful, support-local-cinema way. Joyland is a beautifully observed, patiently told and quietly devastating family drama about people who love each other and still manage to make each other unhappy, because the roles assigned to them leave no room to breathe. It is set in inner-city Lahore, it speaks in Punjabi and Urdu, and it trusts silence more than speeches.
It is not an easy watch, and it is not made for viewers looking for songs, heroes and a comforting ending. In this review we give you an honest breakdown of the story, performances, direction, music and commercial journey, without spoiling its final passages.
Quick Facts: Joyland at a Glance
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Release date | 23 May 2022 (Cannes premiere); 18 November 2022 (Pakistan) |
| Director | Saim Sadiq |
| Writers | Saim Sadiq, Maggie Briggs |
| Genre | Drama |
| Language | Punjabi, Urdu |
| Runtime | 127 minutes |
| Lead cast | Ali Junejo, Rasti Farooq, Alina Khan, Sarwat Gilani, Salmaan Peerzada, Sohail Sameer, Sania Saeed |
| Our rating | 8.5/10 |
The Story: A Household Waiting for a Son (Spoiler-Free)
The Rana family lives in a modest, crowded home in Lahore, where three generations share space, bathrooms, meals and unspoken rules. At the top sits the elderly patriarch, Rana Amanullah, ailing and largely confined to a wheelchair, but still the unquestioned centre of the house. His dearest wish, stated openly and often, is for another grandson to carry the family name. Around him, his elder son Saleem and his wife Nucchi manage the practical business of the household, while the pressure to produce a boy falls most heavily on the younger couple.
Haider, the youngest son, has been unemployed for a long time. Gentle, withdrawn and happiest helping with his nieces or doing tasks around the house that others consider beneath a man, he is treated with a mixture of affection and embarrassment. His wife Mumtaz works at a salon, enjoys her independence and her income, and has a playful, physical ease with Haider that suggests their marriage, unconventional as it looks to the family, works for them.
Everything begins to shift when Haider finally finds work. The job, which he describes to his family in carefully edited terms, is at a local theatre offering erotic dance performances. He is hired as a background dancer, and the star of the troupe is Biba, a confident transgender dancer who runs her act with total professional control and no patience for pity. As Haider is drawn into this night-time world, the family makes a corresponding demand at home: now that the husband works, Mumtaz should give up her job. The film watches, without hurrying, as each person in the house is squeezed between duty and desire. We will not reveal where Haider’s fascination with Biba leads, or what it costs Mumtaz, because the film’s power lies in how gradually those costs become clear.
Performances: Restraint That Speaks Volumes
Ali Junejo as Haider: Junejo, in his feature debut, gives a performance built almost entirely on listening. Haider is a man who has learned to make himself small, and Junejo plays him with downcast eyes, hesitant speech and sudden, unexpected flashes of joy when he dances. It would be easy to make Haider either a saint or a coward. Junejo keeps him human, someone whose passivity is itself a kind of decision, with consequences the film does not excuse.
Rasti Farooq as Mumtaz: Farooq is arguably the film’s soul. Mumtaz begins as its liveliest presence, teasing, capable and visibly content in a marriage that outsiders would call mismatched. As the family’s rules tighten around her, Farooq charts her loss of freedom in small, painful increments: a job surrendered, a room that no longer feels hers, silences where there used to be laughter. Her work in the later sections, with very little dialogue, is the most affecting acting in the film.
Alina Khan as Biba: Khan brings steel and humour to Biba, refusing every invitation the script could have offered to make the character tragic in a simple way. Biba knows exactly how the world sees her, charges money for it on stage, and demands to be dealt with as a professional and a person off it. Khan’s scenes with Junejo crackle because Biba is the only character who says plainly what she wants.
Salmaan Peerzada as Rana Amanullah gives the patriarch warmth and even comedy alongside his stubbornness, which makes the family’s obedience to him understandable rather than cartoonish. Sarwat Gilani as the sharp-tongued Nucchi, Sohail Sameer as Saleem and Sania Saeed in a smaller role complete an ensemble with no weak link. This is true ensemble acting, where even a family dinner with almost no plot purpose tells you everything about who holds power.
Direction and Technical Craft
Saim Sadiq, making his feature debut and co-writing with Maggie Briggs, directs with remarkable patience. Scenes are allowed to run long, conversations overlap with household noise, and the camera often watches from doorways, rooftops and mirrors, as if the audience is another family member who has wandered into the room. Cinematographer Joe Saade shoots Lahore without either glamour or misery. The Rana home feels warm and cramped in equal measure, the city at night glows with wedding lights, motorbike rides and fairground colour, and the theatre sequences have a sweaty, working energy rather than a polished stage shine.
The film was edited by Sadiq with Jasmin Tenucci, and the editing matches the direction: unhurried, trusting the viewer to notice a glance or a closed door. There is a fairground sequence, from which the film takes its title and its poster imagery, that captures in a few minutes the brief, dizzy possibility of a different life for its characters. It is the closest the film comes to pure cinema poetry, and it earns the moment.
Honesty requires noting the trade-offs. The same patience that makes the film feel real will test viewers used to faster storytelling, especially in the first half hour, where the household rhythms are established slowly. A subplot or two are sketched rather than fully developed. These are minor complaints against a debut of this assurance, but they are part of why we rate the film highly rather than perfectly. Sadiq’s control of tone, never mocking the family’s conservatism and never sentimentalising rebellion, is the work of a filmmaker far beyond debut level.
Music and Background Score
Abdullah Siddiqui composed the music for Joyland, and the score is used sparingly, which is exactly right for this material. Long stretches of the film rely on the natural sound of the house and the city: ceiling fans, pressure cookers, street vendors, distant traffic and the muffled music of other people’s celebrations. When Siddiqui’s understated compositions do enter, they underline Haider’s inner life rather than instructing the audience how to feel.
The loudest music in the film comes from within the story itself. The theatre performances are driven by the kind of high-energy Punjabi dance numbers the troupe performs for its paying audience, filmed as work rather than as a glamorous spectacle. The contrast is deliberate and effective. On stage, music means money, confidence and command of the room. At home, quiet means obedience. A brief, joyful sequence in which family members dance together at a celebration is among the film’s happiest moments, and it lands so well precisely because the film has rationed such release.
Viewers expecting a conventional soundtrack album will not find one here. What they will find is sound design and music working together with unusual discipline to build a believable world.
What Works and What Doesn’t
What we loved:
- Superb ensemble performances, with Rasti Farooq and Alina Khan especially memorable
- Patient, confident direction that observes a Lahore family without judgement or cliché
- A screenplay that gives every major character a desire, a duty and a cost
- Beautiful, naturalistic cinematography that finds poetry in ordinary spaces
What could be better:
- The deliberately slow opening half hour will not suit every viewer
- A couple of supporting threads feel underdeveloped compared with the central story
- The ending is intentionally unresolved in places, which some audiences may find frustrating
Box Office: Festivals First, Cinemas Second
Reliable, detailed box office accounting for Pakistani films is often limited, so precision matters here. Joyland premiered at Cannes on 23 May 2022 and released in Pakistani cinemas on 18 November 2022, after a widely reported and much-debated review of its censor clearance that briefly put its domestic release in doubt before it was allowed to proceed with cuts. International trackers report a worldwide gross of around $1.2 million, a modest figure in absolute terms but a respectable one for a subtitled, adult drama with limited screens and no conventional star power.
The commercial story of Joyland was never going to be told in opening weekends alone. Its real achievements were structural. It played major festivals around the world, secured international distribution, was selected as Pakistan’s entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar and became the first Pakistani film to make the category’s shortlist. For an industry whose films rarely travel beyond diaspora circuits, that journey has a value beyond ticket sales, opening doors for other Pakistani filmmakers and proving that a Lahore-set drama in Punjabi and Urdu can hold a global audience.
At home, its theatrical run was limited and its audience was always going to be the urban, festival-aware segment rather than the mass family crowd. Judged as a commercial entertainment, it is a small film. Judged as a breakthrough for Pakistani cinema’s international standing, it is one of the most important releases in the country’s history.
Verdict: Should You Watch It?
Yes, with the right expectations. Come to Joyland for performances, atmosphere and a story that will stay in your head for days, not for pace or comfort. It treats a conservative family’s private unhappiness and a transgender dancer’s working life with the same seriousness, and it refuses to give you a villain to blame, because its subject is the set of rules everyone in the house has agreed to live by.
For Pakistani viewers, it is close to essential viewing, a reminder of what local cinema can do when it trusts its own stories. For everyone else, it is one of the finest South Asian dramas of recent years.
Our rating: 8.5/10 — A quiet, humane and beautifully acted drama that marks a turning point for Pakistani cinema.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Joyland based on a true story?
No. The Rana family and Biba are fictional creations of writer-director Saim Sadiq and co-writer Maggie Briggs, though the film draws on the real world of Lahore’s dance theatres and the everyday pressures of joint family life.
Why was Joyland discussed so much in Pakistan before release?
The film’s themes, including a married man’s attraction to a transgender dancer, made it the subject of public debate and an official review of its censor certificate. It was ultimately released in Pakistan on 18 November 2022 with certain cuts, and the debate itself drew wider attention to the film.
What language is Joyland in and are subtitles available?
The film is in Punjabi and Urdu. International and licensed home versions carry English subtitles, and subtitled screenings were standard during its festival and overseas run.
Where can I watch Joyland?
Availability varies by country. Check major licensed streaming services, arthouse platforms and official digital rental stores in your region for Joyland (2022), and use legal sources only.
What is the runtime and age rating?
The film runs 127 minutes. It deals with adult themes, sexuality and family conflict and was given restrictive ratings in several countries, including an R21 classification in Singapore, so it is intended for adult audiences rather than family viewing.