Banned Films in Pakistan

Joyland is a 2022 Pakistan drama by Saim Sadiq
Starring Rasti Farooq, Sarwat Gilani and Ali Junejo

As the happily patriarchal Rana family craves for the birth of a baby boy, the youngest of the Rana men secretly joins an erotic dance theatre and finds himself falling for a fiercely ambitious trans starlet. Their impossible love story slowly illuminates the entire Rana family's...

Alina Khan, who stars in Joyland, the first major Pakistani film to feature a trans actor in a lead role, said:

I've been very sad. There's nothing against Islam and I don't understand how Islam can get endangered by mere films.

Joyland, which is Pakistan's contender at the Oscars, was set to go on national release, but was banned following pressure from hardline Islamic groups who called the film repugnant.

Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, a senator in the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party, called Joyland cultural terrorism and criticised the government for the shameless act of allowing its release:

I condemn it and will use every legal step to stop Joyland's release. Glamourising transgenders in Pakistan, as well as their love affairs, is a direct attack on our beliefs.

Cancelling the film's licence, which puts its Oscars' contention in doubt, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, said:

Written complaints were received that the film contains highly objectionable material which do not conform with the social values and moral standards of our society and is clearly repugnant to the norms of 'decency and morality' as laid down in Section 9 of the Motion Picture Ordinance, 1979.

Joyland has been hailed on the festival circuit. It was the first Pakistani film to be selected as an official entry at Cannes in May, winning two festival awards and receiving a standing ovation in a packed Salle Debussy theatre.

Update: Unbanned after cuts

21st November 2022. See article from easterneye.biz

Pakistani film Joyland has been unbanned by the censor board of Pakistan after making several scenes were cut.

The full censor board has allowed the local screening of Joyland. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif formed a cabinet committee to look into the matter after some schools of thought had objected to the movie.

Update: Re-banned in Punjab

30th November 2022. See article from hrw.org

Less than 24 hours after the national government's decision to unban Joyland, the Punjab government blocked the film's release in the province.

The Punjab Information and Culture Department explained that the Punjab government decided to re-call Joyland in the wake of persistent complaints received from different quarters.

Pakistan's Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) has conceded before the Supreme Court that the ban on feature film Maalik was imposed without inquiring into the allegations levelled by complainants against the film.

Chairman CBFC Mubashir Hassan conceded this before a two judge bench of the top court which on Friday took up the government's appeal against Sindh High Court's quashing of the government's ban of the film.

Hassan told the court that the board had banned the film on several complaints by the general public against the objectionable script maligning politicians and judiciary. He said that keeping in view the sentiments of public, the members of the board recommended banning the film.

Justice Qazi Faez Isa, on the bench, observed that volume of complaints of the public were meaningless unless these complaints are substantive.

Justice Umar Ata Bandial inquired under which law the ban was imposed. He added that there was nothing wrong with institutions being criticised. Justice Qazi observed that under section 9 of Motion Pictures Ordinance 1979 there was nothing objectionable in the film. Qazi reserved a few choice words for Hassan:

You approved the screening of the film and the other day you banned it as your mood changed on a single phone call. Isn't this effectively corruption? What do you people want? Do you want to devastate the Pakistani film industry?

What are you doing being a chairman of responsible institution? You are repeating like a parrot that the ban was imposed in regard with complaints. Is this the job you are doing?

Following the arguments, the top court directed the federal government to submit a report on objectionable contents in the film along with the objectionable part of the script in order to establish the de-certification of the film Maalik. The hearing of the case was adjourned for 15-days.

Baby is a 2015 India action crime mystery by Neeraj Pandey.
Starring Kerem Sarikaya, Ali Balkan Avci and Zachary Coffin.

An elite counter-intelligence unit learns of a plot, masterminded by a maniacal madman. With the clock ticking, it's up to them to track the terrorists' international tentacles and prevent them from striking at the heart of India.

Baby is an Indian action movie about a spy mission to catch a dreaded terrorist. It has now been banned by Pakistan's film censors. The Dawn newspaper reported:

Censor boards in Islamabad and Karachi have decided to ban the film because it portrays a negative image of Muslims and the negative characters in the film also have Muslim names.

All CDs and DVDs of the film have also been banned in Islamabad. A representative of the film's distributor, Everready Pictures informed the paper that the film has been banned in Pakistan.

Earlier, director Neeray Pandey was quoted as saying that the film was not anti-Pakistan. The board routinely bans films deemed to have anti- Pakistan themes.

In an unprecedented move by Lahore High Court, Justice Khalid Mehmood Khan issued a contempt notice to the Chairman of the Central Board Film Censorship (CBFC) and senior bureaucrat Syed Arshad Ali for failing to stop the exhibition of illegal foreign films in Pakistan.

The struggle to prohibit the exhibition of Indian films has been deeply connected to efforts to revive the fledging local cinema industry by veteran Lollywood and Punjabi filmmakers. They claim that Indian films hinder the progress of local filmmakers, and their economic gain on Pakistani soil is against the law.

As a result of the notice, the CBFC has refused to is issue a film certificate for the upcoming Bollywood film Bullett Raja .

Ali, the censor board's chairman, issued a statement to the press saying that the censoring of all films had been stopped, and the board would let the courts decide the matter. He maintained that the board had, so far, not censored any smuggled or illegal content; in fact all of the films (including Bullett Raja ) that had been stopped had already been approved by the Ministry of Commerce.