© Mizero Cedric, Umunyana, 2025, film still

national premiere

Between fictional narrative and childhood memories, Umunyana evokes a suspended world, traversed by a character suffering from a memory disorder, which leads him into a universe where the Inka, a cow, is mourned, sung, and incarnated. A deeply venerated but now forgotten deity, she reappears in the form of a luminous specter that bodies try to revive through gesture, breath, and song.
Influenced by his research on the slaughter of animals on market days — a practice that strongly contrasts with the cultural respect for cows in Rwanda — Cedric Mizero’s performative installation is built as a fragmented vision. Images emerge, leading us on an exploration of the history and culture of livestock rearing in Rwanda.
Umunyana sings the loss of a vanishing rural world and celebrates the invisible bonds that unite humans with animals, the past, and the land.

Bio

Cedric Mizero is a Rwandan multidisciplinary artist and storyteller whose work fuses fashion, visual arts, and performance to explore themes of identity, memory, and cultural resilience. His film-performance UMUNYANA (created in October 2025) weaves fictional narrative with childhood memories, focusing on themes of memory and mourning through the figure of the cow, a central element in Rwandan culture. His work has been presented in international exhibitions, including Art of Peace: Art After War at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2025, and Protection at Crenshaw Dairy Mart in Los Angeles. Mizero’s art continues to connect personal and collective stories, offering profound reflections on the human experience.

Credits

Concept and artistic direction Mizero Cedric
With Dawidi, Ismael Nemeyemungu and Sylvia Munyana.
Production Alejandro Jiménez Santofimio, Louise Mukamusana Mutabazi.
Production KARAME PRODUCTIONS
Co-production Festival d’Automne à Paris; Festival Spielart in Munich; Compagnie Kadidi in Marseille
With the support of the Institut Français

Duration 

75′

Language/Subtitles

Kinyarwanda with English subtitles

Tickets

€. 15,00
€. 12,00 reduced – Under 26/E’BAL Card

A performance presented as part of E’BAL – palcoscenici per la danza contemporanea in Emilia Romagna