Buckle up: 'Joyland' trailer draws you in for an emotionally challenging ride

Set in Lahore, the Saim Sadiq directorial navigates its way through secrets, life, love and death

Is deception still a sin if it, for once, allows you to live freely? Are you capable of loving more than once or more than one person? How much of our lives is in our control before society and responsibilities kick in? Similar thoughts would engulf your mind as you watch the beautifully edited and viscerally sensual trailer of the award-winning film, Joyland.

Two weeks before its nationwide release, the trailer for the much-anticipated film has finally dropped on YouTube. We’ve been hearing praises about the film and its continued winning streak globally while Pakistan was deprived of it — but the wait was all worth it.

Set in the streets of old Lahore, the barely two-minute clip begins with a dark joke on love, sensuality, and death — which seemingly looks like Saim Sadiq directorial's focal point. The trailer begins with Haider (Ali Junejo) telling the infamous joke about a mosquito and chicken to her lover Biba (Alina Khan).

Without giving away too much, the clip goes on to detail the dual lives many characters are living in the film. The Rana family isn’t aware of Haider’s dancing troupe, a theatre festival or his unconventional affair with the charming Biba.

While Haider is away courting another kind of love in his life, his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) shares some intimate moments of sheer joy and comfort with what seems like her sister-in-law Nucchi (Sarwat Gilani).

As Haider and Mumtaz explore love elsewhere around them, they still share an unbreakable bond. They’re both keeping secrets, they’re both scared, perhaps even guilty and the price of keeping their secrets may lead them to ruins. The next scene in the trailer shows Mumtaz and Haider cleaning up a crime scene as a bloodied Biba walks away.

The joy soon changes to dread as the trailer ends with a glance at the rest of the Rana family: Sohail Sameer, Salman Peerzada, and Sania Saeed. A glance of judgment and reason towards the madness that we call life.

Joyland will come to cinemas near you on November 18. Watch the trailer here: