Cyrus Moussavi has carved out a career that is as improbable as it is original. Raised in Iowa in a bicultural Iranian American household, Cyrus grew up spending summers in Iran and the rest of the year steeped in his father’s love of prog rock and his mother’s passion for traditional Iranian music. That early immersion in disparate sound worlds laid the groundwork for a lifelong obsession with music—not as a performer, but as a listener, connector, and storyteller. After studying economics and philosophy in college, Cyrus gravitated toward filmmaking, not to make conventional movies but to explore how visual storytelling could capture, preserve and transmit music and the lives of those who make it.

As a filmmaker, Cyrus has developed a body of work that’s both deeply collaborative and boldly inventive. His films include “I Snuck Off the Slave Ship,” a science-fiction documentary co-directed with the visionary artist and musician Lonnie Holley that screened at Sundance and BlackStar, among many other festivals and galleries, and the upcoming “Somebody’s Gone,” a feature-length film about gospel legend Brother Theotis Taylor that he is co-directing with Brother Theotis’ son, Hubert. And as a music archivist and promoter, since 2019 Cyrus has led the influential reissue label Mississippi Records, where he works closely with artists and their families to bring overlooked and under-celebrated music from around the world to new audiences.

In this interview, Cyrus discusses how his early experiences shaped his eclectic sensibility, what it means to ethically archive music across cultures and how he sees his work as both creative practice and cultural preservation. 

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