Closed Curtains (Theater)

The theatre play Closed Curtains was inspired by the documentary This is Not a Film by director Jafar Panahi. He made the documentary in the spring of 2011 when he a 20-year ban on filmmaking was imposed upon him. Panahi smuggled the film out of the country so that it could be screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Referring to the agony of censored Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, actor Thomas Janssens analyzes what it is like for someone whose voice is smothered. Janssens invites two men that are all too familiar with the topic of censorship and the immobility and isolation that result from it: film and stage director Sabri Saad el Hamus who left the chaos of Egypt to settle in the Netherlands, and director Mokhallad Rasem, who has been living and working in Belgium for five years to flee the war in Iraq.
The festival also screens Panahi's latest film Taxi, for wich he won the Golden Bear at the Cannes Film Festival 2015.