A special committee has been established by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to investigate concerns against the movie Joyland, which was halted almost a week before its scheduled premiere.
The office of the prime minister in Islamabad on Monday issued a notice with the title “very immediate.” The subject was “Committee to consider complaints regarding the Urdu film Joyland,” and a list of members was included after that. They included the chairperson of the law and justice committee, the minister for information and broadcasting, the minister for communications, the minister for the board of investments, the minister for information technology and telecommunications, the adviser to the prime minister on Gilgit-Baltistan, the PTA chairman, and the minister for political and economic affairs.
The committee will “examine the accusations that the aforementioned video violates social and moral norms and recommend further action.” The group will receive funding from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for its secretariat, and it will present its conclusions on Tuesday (today). With Images is a copy of the notice.
Despite all of its accomplishments, including becoming Pakistan’s first entry at Cannes, winning numerous honours at other film festivals, and being selected as Pakistan’s Oscar consideration nominee, Joyland was still prohibited from having a theatrical release in its place of origin. Its exhibition licence, which had been given months earlier, was revoked by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. Joyland has been labelled “uncertified” by the federal government in response to complaints that it “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.”
Many celebrities have also spoken out, urging the authorities to free Joyland as a result of the widespread outcry this action has generated. The project’s actors and staff were very upset about the situation as well. They demanded its publication right away on social media. We, as a crew, are devastated by this situation, said director Saim Sadiq in a statement. I feel forced to state that this abrupt U-turn by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. He claimed that by ordering provincial censor boards to comply with their choices despite the provinces’ sovereignty to decide on censorship under the 18th Amendment, the ministry had violated the Constitution.
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