Joyland, the film by Sarmad Khoosat which has won awards at Cannes and international acclaim, finally opened to audiences in Sindh and Islamabad on Friday, November 18. It was an epic battle to get to this point, with the film having been passed by the Censor Board, then banned, then passed again after review by a full board constituted by the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Sarmat Khoosat, who previously made a film in 2015 about Manto, probably identifies even more now with the beleaguered Urdu writer, who went to court six times on charges of obscenity, but was never convicted. Judge Munir, the last judge to preside over his trial, threatened Manto with jail if he didn’t stop writing his short stories. Blocked from expressing his creative gifts, Manto sank into an alcoholic depression, was put in an insane asylum where he was given electroshock therapy, and eventually died of liver cirrhosis, penniless and broken.
Pakistan doesn’t learn its lessons: the witch hunt against Joyland, which portrays a Lahore family struggling with repressed desires, secrets, and societal norms, has been nearly as vicious as the censure which Manto faced back in the 1950s.
Although the film was passed by the Censor Board initially, a fashion designer joined hands with a Senator to start a smear campaign on social media, and then a petition to have the movie legally banned.
