Pakistan has changed course and lifted a ban on its country Oscars entry Joylandbut the film will be somewhat scrapped by local censors, an aide to the country’s prime minister has revealed on Twitter.
Joyland is Pakistan’s official entry to the Oscars as best International feature film category and won a top prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. The film was previously approved for wide release in Pakistan, but just a week before its scheduled opening on Friday, Pakistan’s Information and Broadcasting Ministry reversed its decision and issued a ban.
Written and directed by Saim Sadiq, the film features a love story between a married man and a transgender woman, which sparked controversy among some conservatives in the Muslim-majority country. The ban was enacted following a concerted social media campaign targeting the film, claiming that it violated Pakistani and Muslim social values.
Salman Sufi, an aide to Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif who has outspokenly opposed the earlier ban, took to Twitter on Wednesday to celebrate the reversal: “The film #Joyland has been approved for release by the Censor Board’s review committee commissioned by [Prime Minister Sharif],” he wrote. “Freedom of expression is a fundamental right and must be nurtured within the confines of the law.”
Sufi described the cuts that would be made to Joyland as “minor” in a follow-up interview with the Associated Press, but declined to detail which scenes would be changed. He says the film could be released on Friday, the originally planned opening day.
Transgender people continue to face persecution and extreme social stigma in Pakistan, although some progress has been made recently with the introduction of a new law protecting their rights and a Supreme Court ruling classifying them as a “third gender”.
“Transgender people are citizens of Pakistan as much as anyone else,” Sufi told the AP. “We have also launched a hotline for their concerns from the Prime Minister’s office and the Prime Minister is fully committed to protecting their rights.”
The ban loomed for a while Joyland‘s Oscar chances, as all international feature film contenders must have played a minimum of seven days in their country of origin or a similar run outside their home country to be eligible for the Academy Awards. In response to the ban, French distributor Condor Films stepped in to say it would give the film a qualifying week-long release in French cinemas starting November 18, ahead of its planned, longer release in France in December.
In her Cannes review, The Hollywood Reportercritic Lovia Gyarke praised the film as “a painful consideration of gender and sexuality.”
Joyland premiered at Cannes, where it won the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard. Film Constellation handles international sales of the film, with North American rights held by WME Independent.