Joyland (Urdu: جوائے لینڈ) is a 2022 Pakistani drama film, written and directed by Saim Sadiq in his feature directorial debut.

Set in inner-city Lahore, Joyland centers around the low-income Rana family, headed by an elder patriarch (Peerzada) who yearns for the birth of a grandson.

He forces his daughter-in-law Mumtaz (Farooq) to quit her job after Haider (Junejo), his youngest son and her husband, finds work at an erotic dance theater.

[4] Joyland's executive producers include prominent figures Malala Yousufzai, Jemima Goldsmith, Riz Ahmed, and Ramin Bahrani among others.

On another night, Mumtaz and Nucchi go to an amusement park called Joyland, while Haider and the other backup dancers prepare to perform alongside Biba.

When the electricity at the theater unexpectedly shuts off, Haider convinces Biba and the other dancers to go through with their performance until the lights come back on; their routine proves a success with the audience.

Additionally, Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan of the Jamaat-e-Islami political party accused the film of being "against Pakistani values", stating that, "Glamourising transgenders in Pakistan, as well as their love affairs, is a direct attack on our beliefs.

"[26] In a written defense published in Variety, Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who is also an executive producer of the film, stated:[27] Joyland is not activism posing as art; it doesn't argue for a particular point of view or issue a call to action.

How tragic that a film created by and for Pakistanis is now banned from our screens because of claims that it does not "represent our way of life" or "portrays a negative image of our country."

The opposite is true — the film reflects reality for millions of ordinary Pakistanis, people who yearn for freedom and fulfilment, people who create moments of joy every day for those they love.On 16 November 2022, an aide to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told Associated Press that a committee formed to evaluate the film approved its release with minor cuts.

The website's consensus reads: "With stunning honesty that's achingly bittersweet, Joyland tackles gender and sexual fluidity in a repressed patriarchal society with wisps of hopefulness.

[34] Upon the film's premiere in India, Anna M. M. Vetticad wrote on Firstpost: "In these divisive times, it is worth pondering over the many commonalities between our two countries – our failings included – as are reflected in this wonderfully sensitive chronicle of friendship and love, longing and loneliness, sexuality, desire, enforced gender roles, and the everydayness behind which prejudice, repression and oppression thrive."

Vetticad added that, "In contrast to the cacophony of tyranny and persecution accompanying Haider, Mumtaz and Biba's journey, the film [...] runs as smoothly as a symphony in motion.

Joshi praised the "virtuoso cast", writing, "each character, irrespective of her or his length of stay on screen, is imbued with a rare completeness, and brought alive by meticulous, effortless performance".

Next she brought out the pathos of the film writing, "The circle of life is communicated with tenderness and poise by Sadiq that makes it doubly poignant.

[38] Lovia Gyarkye of The Hollywood Reporter called Joyland a "family saga, one that [the director] Sadiq uses to observe how gender norms constrict, and then asphyxiate, individuals".

"[39] Deadline Hollywood's Anna Smith opined that the film "has a vivid sense of place, created not so much by its geographical backdrop as its characters", and wrote that it "remains a thoughtful, well performed and engrossing drama set in a culture that's shifting, and not always with ease.

"[40] Allan Hunter of Screen Daily wrote, "Sadiq's screenplay navigates a complex web of secrets and lies, pressures and prejudices to create a soulful human drama intent on challenging narrow minds."

Gorber called the film "profound and powerful", and one that "upends all expectation of cinema from that often closed culture, one that brashly looks at love, family, longing in its myriad forms.

[42] Variety's Guy Lodge found the film "tartly funny and plungingly sad in equal measure," and opined that, "as a tale of transgender desire in a Muslim country, its very premise makes it a boundary-breaker."