Pakistani trans drama wins Cannes ‘Queer Palm’ award
A PAKISTANI movie featuring a daring portrait of a transgender dancer in the Muslim country won the Cannes “Queer Palm” prize for best LGBT, “queer” or feministthemed movie last Friday (27), the jury head told AFP.
Joyland by director Saim Sadiq, a tale of sexual revolution, tells the story of the youngest son in a patriarchal family who is expected to produce a baby boy with his wife. He instead joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for the troupe’s director, a trans woman.
It is the first-ever Pakistani competitive entry at the Cannes festival and last Friday also won the Jury Prize in the “Un Certain Regard” competition, a segment focusing on young, innovative
cinema talent. “It’s a very powerful film, which represents everything that we stand for,” “Queer Palm” jury head, French director Catherine Corsini, told AFP.
Corsini herself took the award last year with La Fracture, which features a lesbian couple’s relationship against the backdrop of the “Yellow Vest” movement in France.
Joyland will echo across the world,” Corsini said. “It has strong characters who are both complex and real. Nothing is distorted. We were blown away by this film.”
The “Queer Palm” has been won by big-name directors in the past and attracted top talent to its juries, but has no official place at the world’s top film festival. Awards for films with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer content
are already an integral part of other major movie gatherings, including Berlin which has handed out its “Teddy Award” since 1987, and made it part of its official programme.
Not so at Cannes, where the festival’s leadership will not even allow the “Queer
Palm” to set up shop in its main building, the Palais du Festival. “It makes me sad the festival is still cold-shouldering the Queer Palm,” Corsini said.
Past winners of the prize, created in 2010 by critic Franck Finance-Madureira, include Todd Haynes for
Carol and Xavier Dolan for Laurence Anyways.
Joyland beat off several other strong entries, including Close by Belgian director Lukas Dhont and Tchaikovsky’s Wife by Kirill Serebrennikov, both hot contenders for the Cannes Festival’s top Palme d’Or award.