Joyland, Pakistan’s entry for this year’s Oscars, now boasts yet another victory. According to the festival website, actor Ali Junejo, who plays Haider, was awarded the FIPRESCI Acting Prize. The prize was announced on Sunday, and the information was also posted to the festival’s and Joyland’s official social media profiles.
The festival shared the news with the following words about Junejo’s performance:
“We award the Best Actor Prize to Ali Junejo in Joyland for his intimate, thoughtful and nuanced performance as Haider, a man grappling with his diverging sense of self and familial responsibility. Junejo emerges as the film’s most flexible and dependable performance owing to his generosity and earnestness with each cast member, both in behavioral and linguistic choices.
View this post on Instagram
“His ability to convey the ambivalent paradoxes of Haider, while delivering a performance of such searing clarity and empathy recalibrates the vivid textures of Joyland away from the social realism of its larger goals, turning it into an evocative character study in a performance of quiet complexity.”
The juried prize winners for the 34th Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) were revealed on January 15; the festival is scheduled to run from January 5 to 16. The festival featured 134 films from 64 nations, including 27 world debuts.
View this post on Instagram
The lineup includes Talking Pictures, New Voices New Visions, Modern Masters, Queer Cinema, Cine Latino, True Stories, World Cinema Now, and 35 of the International Feature Film Oscar nominees.
The jury award categories included the FIPRESCI Prize for films in the International Feature Film Oscar submissions program.
Last week, the film was further shortlisted by the Academy in the Best International Feature Film category, down to 15.
The film was announced as Pakistan’s official entry for the 95th Academy Awards in September last year.
View this post on Instagram
