DesertTalkies Film Reviews!

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness [2015] Direction by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy Language: Urdu/Punjabi I was too young to watch this documentary when it was originally released in 2015: the documentary focuses around the subject of honour killings and community pride in lower income groups in rural areas of Pakistan. Not only are those wildly inappropriate topics for a child under the age of 15 to actually watch and listen to, but I think my parents were perhaps trying to shield me. For the longest time, when I heard of Pakistan, I thought of family and excellent food, but this documentary exposed the dark underbelly of a Pakistan that I was not used to seeing: a Pakistan that, whilst being a haven for culture, is a country rife with social challenges that have yet to be resolved.  I won't judge this documentary by the quality/clarity of the actual video (I did watch it on YouTube so I may be completely wrong), but by the impact that it left, by the messages conveyed throug...

  JOYLAND [2022] - UPDATED! Starring: Alina Khan, Ali Junejo, Rasti Farooq, Sarwat Gilani Direction & Screenplay by Saim Sadiq Language: Urdu / Punjabi I finally managed to get my hands on the uncensored version of Joyland, and safe to say it completely surpassed my expectations! After watching it, I'm just so surprised that so much was censored. There were some incredibly sexual scenes, where censorship was perhaps warranted in the religious, Pakistani society, but completely platonic hugs and dances were so brutally cut out. Seeing some of the censored scenes in full was jarring for me, and it confronts a reality about Pakistan that is uncomfortable to watch. However, the point of film is to challenge stereotypes, and find a new angle that evokes pathos within an audience. After watching the film in its entirety, everything just completely fit together. Seeing Haider's complete instability made me sympathise with his wife, when I had originally thought that he was complet...

  JOYLAND [2022] Starring: Alina Khan, Ali Junejo, Rasti Farooq, Sarwat Gilani Direction & Screenplay by Saim Sadiq Language: Urdu / Punjabi It has been a long while since a Pakistani film has even reached a foreign audience, but here we are with a film that has been nominated for an Oscar! Although it is in a lot of ways an exceptional film, there was one key factor that dictated my viewing experience: censorship. I watched the film in Pakistan, in one of the only provinces that allowed the movie to be screened in theatres. There were very obvious cuts (I later found out that over twenty minutes of the film had been cut in the censored version). This censorship is a huge problem! It is incredibly disheartening to see that a movie that has been produced in Pakistan cannot even be viewed properly in its home! The censorship completely interrupted the narrative of the film, to the point where I just could not understand some of the film’s progression. The movie was full of sexual...