The Rana family live in the heart of the metropolitan yet conservative city of Lahore, Pakistan. The unemployed youngest son, Haider (Ali Junejo), has a seemingly happy relationship with wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq), who is privately cracking under the pressure to give birth to a son. Desperate for work, Haider secretly takes up a job as a background dancer at an erotic theatre where he is drawn to an ambitious trans starlet, Biba (Alina Khan). Before long, Haider and Biba are consumed in a passionate romance, a clandestine affair that threatens to derail the family’s fiercely traditional values. Winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and the Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, Joyland, the first Pakistani film to play at the festival, explores a society that is slowly turning a corner on gender and sexual identity.

There will be Open Captioned screenings at 18.10 on Monday 27th and 13.00 on Tuesday 28th.

Notes by David O’Mahony