(Lahore) The Pakistani Film joylandwhich tells the love story of a married man and a transgender woman, may never be released in his country, after the work, which won an award at the Cannes Film Festival, was authorized by the authority of censorship, but banned by the government.
The film, which won the “Queer Palm”, LGBT award, in May at Cannes and which will represent Pakistan at the next Oscars, was due to be released in his country on Friday. It won’t, unless the ban is eventually lifted.
“It’s almost like taking two steps back every time you make some progress,” Kami Sid, a model and transgender activist, told AFP on Wednesday.
“I’m sad for my country, for the (film) industry and, above all, I’m sad for the transgender community,” she added.
Although their rights are a priori protected by law, most transgender people in Pakistan are forced to live on the margins of society, often having to beg, dance at weddings or engage in prostitution in order to survive.
joyland tells the story of the younger, married son of a Pakistani family under the authority of a patriarch, who falls in love with a truculent transgender revue leader in a cabaret.
Their affair exposes the hypocrisy of relationships in a multigenerational family, where sexuality is taboo, and the clash between modernity and tradition.
The release of the film in Pakistan had been authorized in August by the Bureau of Censorship. But the information ministry reversed the decision last week after protests from radical religious groups and some individuals.
The ministry said the film violated “standards of decency and morality”, which earned him outraged and mocking comments on social media, with some accusing him of speaking out without the film even having been viewed. .
“Serious injustice”
In a statement, director Saim Sadiq said he was “disgusted” by the ministry’s decision, adding that the entire film crew intended to “make (his) voice fully heard against this grave injustice”.
In the face of criticism, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif intervened personally by setting up a committee to look into the matter. The latter recommended Tuesday that it be reviewed by the Office of Censorship, which will be responsible for the final decision.
In 2009, Pakistan, a country with a conservative and patriarchal culture, was among the first in the world to legally recognize a third gender.
Then in 2018, he passed a law granting transgender people the right to self-determine their gender on all official documents and even to opt for a mixture of the two.
But these advances and all attempts to further protect the rights of transgender people in Pakistan have been fiercely resisted by Islamist parties who denounce the intrusion of Western values.
These parties have been campaigning for months for the amendment of the existing legislation which was intended to limit the discrimination of which trans people are victims and in particular to promote their access to education and employment.
“For us, this ban on the film is clearly a continuation of attacks on the transgender community,” Shahzadi Rai, a trans rights activist, told AFP.
“The film was made in Pakistan, is about Pakistan and ultimately banned by Pakistan. It is terribly disturbing for the transgender community,” she added.
The film’s fate in Pakistan “remains very uncertain”, its creators told AFP.