Make joyplot/ridgeline plot using dates as the x-axis

I am plotting a joyplot where the x-axis is a range of dates. However, joyplot only accepts dates arguments as numbers... As a result, the chart is plotted correctly, but the x-axis displays dates as their serial number, which is not very friendly to the end user.

I have tried various methods to format the axis (like this one: Set x axis labels for joyplot), but none worked so far!

How can I format the x-axis so that it displays dates in the 'mm.yyyy' format (eg.: 01.2022)?

I am using the following database to plot this example (saved as a .csv to my computer): https://www.boxofficemojo.com/genre/sg4242469121/?ref_=bo_gs_table_24

Table example (copy it and paste in a .csv file, naming it "Example", as in code below):

Code:

import joypy
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

%matplotlib inline

df = pd.read_csv(r'C:\Users\Downloads\Example.csv', delimiter=';') #replace file name and directory with your file, created from the table above
print(df.shape)
df.head()

fig, ax = joypy.joyplot(df, 
                        by = 'Distributor', 
                        column='Date', 
                        colormap=cm.autumn, 
                        figsize = (10,6),
                        fade = True)

Output plot:

First, please accept that the x-axis tick values in my answer may not be correct; it is unclear what the value obtained by ax[-1].get_xticks() indicates. Assuming it represents days, I can change it to a date in the following way: since the time series in maplotlib is Gregorian standard, I convert it from a number to a date.

df['Release Date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['Release Date'], format='%b %d, %Y')

import joypy
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import cm
import matplotlib.dates as mdates
%matplotlib inline

fig, ax = joypy.joyplot(df, 
                        by = 'Distributor', 
                        column='Date', 
                        colormap=cm.autumn, 
                        figsize = (10,6),
                        xrot=45,
                        fade = True)

print(ax[-1].get_xticks())
new_dates = [mdates.num2date(x +  mdates.date2num(np.datetime64('1900-01-01'))) for x in ax[-1].get_xticks()]
new_dates = [t.strftime('%b-%Y') for t in new_dates]
ax[-1].set_xticklabels(new_dates)

fig.show()