Open Doors is once again presenting a new edition of Porte aperte sul cinema dal mondo, aiming to introduce the audience to geographically distant film cultures, highlighting valuable talents and titles. This is made possible through the renewed collaboration between Open Doors, the City of Bellinzona, which has been a direct supporter of the Locarno Film Festival's Open Doors section for years, and SpazioReale.
The event is being held in conjunction with the opening of the World Press Photo Exhibition 2023, creating a bridge between different yet interconnected forms of art and languages, such as photography, cinema and journalism, and providing the audience with a profound moment of discussion and exchange. The featured title is among the projects that have previously been part of Open Doors' professional programs and has subsequently garnered extraordinary global recognition: Joyland by newcomer Saim Sadiq, a Pakistani film that won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
This work, which tells an unconventional love story in contemporary Pakistan, explores the boundaries of a patriarchal and male-dominated society confronted with diversity, probing the contradictions and suppressed feelings of the protagonists. It's an intelligent film that managed to establish new Pakistani cinema in the realm of major global festivals, being the first national title to compete in Cannes. The story of Haider, who encounters the captivating Biba, a transgender dancer, in a cabaret, and finds himself defying family expectations, has offered a different and original perspective on the local society, now to be discovered by the Ticino audience on the big screen.
The screening, at 8:30 PM, will be free of charge, in the original language with Italian subtitles. For the occasion, the photography exhibition will remain open until its start. Updated information about the event is available at www.spazioreale.ch.