The Institut français’ annual celebration of cultural diversity, Mosaïques, is back for its tenth edition, with another lively and inspiring mix of world cinema, literature and music. This year’s festival is timed to overlap on 21 May with the UNESCO World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.

This year’s line-up again includes a broad mix of films from across the globe, many shown for the first time in the UK. There’s new work from Zhang Lu (Desert Dream), veteran Egyptian director Yousry Nasrallah (The Aquarium) and Abdellatif Kechiche, Best Director at this year’s Césars, who will join audiences for the preview of his latest feature La Graine et le mulet (Couscous). From Tadjikistan, a double bill of films by director Djamshed Usmonov, including a preview of his latest feature To Get to Heaven First You Have to Die introduced by the director himself. From neighbouring China, director and writer Xialou Guo will be present after the screening of How is your fish today? to discuss her film and her latest novels A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. The trip continues across Kazakhstan (Shuga), Russia (Simple Things) and Macedonia (I am from Tito Veles), concluding with Alain Gomis’ road movie Andalucia.

An exhibition in the library of the Institut will present the highlights from Titouan Lamazou’s new show, on tour from the Paris Musée de l’homme. ‘Women of the World’ comprises portraits (composed of sketches, paintings, landscape and portrait photographs arranged as large-scale collages) of the 230 exceptional women Lamazou met in the course of his six-year voyage across the world. The portraits were also collected in 50 four-minute profiles, of which a selection will be screened at Ciné lumière on Thursday 22 May, together with a documentary profile of the artist, ahead of a talk with the man himself.


Music this year comes from Frédéric Nevchehirlian, singer in the famous slam band Vibrion, who will lead a slam workshop in the library and from Shrine DJ Christine Indigo who will spin a slamming digital mash up for the festival’s tenth anniversary party.