For several years, the Flemish platform Mooov has been showcasing cinema in all its diversity, by unearthing little gems from all over the world at festivals. Alongside a distribution activity — which, for example, has enabled Belgian film buffs to discover a masterpiece like An Elephant Sitting Still by Chinese Hu Bo —, Mooov has been offering a festival since 2019, presenting some forty films by very diverse backgrounds, including many previews. As in 2020, it takes place this year online, from April 20 to May 3 on Mooov.be.

Focus on Iranian cinema

This 3rd edition of the Mooov Festival opens this Tuesday at 8 p.m. with Radiograph of a Family (rebroadcast on 27 & 28/4 ), an intimate documentary in which filmmaker Firouzeh Khosrovani looks back on her parents' unhappy marriage in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution.

This film is part of a focus devoted to Iranian cinema, which will allow you to see or re-watch ten recent productions, including Yalda, the night of forgiveness by Massoud Bakhshi (4/21 & 1/5), Son-Mother by Mahnaz Mohammadi (27, 29/4 & 1/5) and especially There is No Evil by Mohammad Rasoulof (27/4 & 2/5), winner of the Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlinale.

Coming from the last Venice Film Festival this time, we can also preview the Grand Jury Prize Nuevo Orden (26-27/4), a very impressive film by Michel Franco which explodes the Mexican caste society, and Notturno (25-27/4) by the great Italian documentary maker Gianfranco Rosi, who this time posed his camera on the side of the moving borders of Syria.

A jury of women

This year, the international jury of the Mooov Festival is composed entirely of women, such as the Syrian filmmaker based in Brussels Rand Abou Faker, the programmer of the Rotterdam festival Delly Shirazi, the Iranian filmmaker and activist Mahnaz Mohammadi or the journalist of the VRT Loubna Khalkhali. These will have to decide between eight feature films from Costa Rica, Argentina, Iran, Nigeria, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico and China (with the very beautiful Wisdom Tooth, see opposite). The winner will succeed This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection by Lesothan Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese in 2020 and India's Praveen Morchhale's Widow of Silence in 2019.

Apart from the forty or so virtual film screenings, the Mooov festival also offers other free online activities. As part of the focus on Iranian cinema, on 4/21 at 7:30 p.m., we will be able to attend a meeting entitled “Is there life after Kiarostami? (deceased in 2016), which will take stock of young Iranian cinema.

Among the other themes addressed: the role of migration on the identity of a filmmaker, a panel on Palestinian cinema with in particular the Arab brothers and Tarzan Nasser and Ameen Nayfeh — including the films Gaza Mon Amour , with Hiam Abbass, and the absurd road movie 200 Meters are programmed at the festival — a discussion on the fashion industry (eight years after the collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh) or even a debate around gender parity in the cinema.

Despite all its efforts, the festival indeed regrets that this year it was only able to program 40% of films by women… Among them, we find the Japanese Naomi Kawase with True Mothers (the 28 & 30/4), labeled Cannes 2020, or Haifaa al-Mansour. Discovered with the very beautiful Wadjda in 2013, revisited in 2018 with the failed Mary Shelley, the Saudi filmmaker presents The Perfect Candidate (1 & 2/5), an astonishing feminist film essay in a country that , it's nothing to say, is not…

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