BRUSSELS.- The multidisciplinary festival Moussem Cities, organised by Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre in collaboration with Bozar, Kaaitheater, KVS, Cinema Aventure and the collective Comment peut-on être persan?, returns in February '23 with a new edition dedicated to metropolis Tehran. Bozar is participating in the festival with a selection of Iranian cinema, music and an installation.

At Bozar, the great 83-year-old Iranian filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui will talk to the audience about his decades of work, through Iranian history and its upheavals. Mehrjui is a representative of a generation of filmmakers who developed Iranian cinema. He has received dozens of awards both in Iran and abroad. He gained international recognition with his second feature The Cow, which became one of the pillars of Iranian cinema history. After screening his most recent film A Minor ('21) on 2 February, his film Tehran Tehran ('10) will be screened on 3 February.

For the music section, Bozar welcomes two young members of the Iranian diaspora: Iranian producer Pouya Ehsaei fuses electronic with traditional Iranian music, and Marjan Farsad, in addition to her musical abilities as an Iranian singer-songwriter, will give an insight into her practice as an illustrator and animator with dazzling projections.

Finally, visual artist Golrokh Nafisi will present at Bozar her project Continuous City. Her installation interweaves different elements (textiles, hand-embroidered curtains and an in situ wall drawing) and refers to the complexity of life in big cities.

The context: Moussem Cities Tehran

With the multidisciplinary festival Moussem Cities, Moussem and its Brussels partners turn their gaze to a metropolis with a rich and culturally varied history, which because of its artistic dynamism plays a vital role. Moussem Cities is a platform for artists; it works on universal themes, sheds light on the local artistic context, and nurtures an exchange with Brussels.

With more than 10 million inhabitants, the metropolis of Tehran is the cultural and commercial heart of Iran, that, with its rich history and immense cultural heritage, has had a major impact on the world. Today, the city is a dynamic centre for contemporary art, in a country where civil rights, artistic freedom and the mobility of artists are under great pressure, as evidenced by the recent ongoing protests.