Balkan Trafik! is a festival dedicated to exchange between Western and South-Eastern Europe as well as a symbol of European and Brussels’ multiculturalism. In 2003, during one of his trips to Kosovo as a film director, Nicolas Wieërs met students from the University of Pristina who had a profound effect on him and also on the cultural life in Brussels. Touched by their endurance and zest for life, upon returning to Belgium, he decided to produce more than just a single documentary on the Balkan region. His guideline was to “transform the idea of the time bomb of the Balkans into a cultural powder keg,” hence he produced a festival, the first of its kind in Belgium, to put to the fore traditional and electronic music as well as cinematic artists who originate from South-eastern Europe. In 2016, after celebrating a decade of Balkan Trafik!, the festival has grown into much more than a “Balkans vs Europe”» festival. It enables people of all the communities in Brussels to see how rich their culture is and to share it with others in the famous Centre for Fine Arts of Brussels during the three festival days every April.
Musical performance by Srdjan Vucic and Sinisha Davchevski