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 transgender starlet. Their impossible love story slowly illuminates the entire Rana family's desire for sexual rebellion. With stunning honesty that's achingly bittersweet, JOYLAND tackles gender and sexual fluidity in a repressed patriarchal society with wisps of hopefulness. 

In Urdu with English subtitles. NR, 2h 6m.

"The frame moves slowly, if at all, but it always brims with physical and emotional energy; there’s always something in the ether, whether embodied by dazzling displays of light as characters move across stages and club floors or by breathtaking silences." – indieWire

"JOYLAND's hallmark is the breadth and nuance it affords every one of its characters. All, we realise, are in some kind of transition." – Financial Times

"A haunting, intricate rumination on desire, truth, and drowning." – Little White Lies

"JOYLAND's quiet power comes not through melodrama, which Sadiq scrupulously avoids, but its deep affection for its characters. It's a modern tale of changing gender roles and the patriarchal crisis that could just as easily have taken place in New York." – Time Out