For the second year in a row, we are joining forces with Kolektiv Igralke to co-organise the Zoom + Igralke Festival

 
Under the title Unconquered Bodies, this year’s festival brings a rich program to Filodrammatica, KUC Kalvarija and the Croatian Cultural Centre in Sušak from 24 September to 2 October.

Below, you can find the full program and an introduction by Sendi Sotlar of Kolektiv Igralke.

 

Admission to all programmes is free // no reservations // free tickets can be picked up at the venue one hour before the start of each performance, subject to venue capacity

UPDATE: The performance bone(r) in the throat, which was scheduled to open the festival on 24 September, has been POSTPONED due to an actor’s illness.

 

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PROGRAM

✺ THURSDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER

bone(r) in the throat

Miloš Janjić | SRB
→ dance theatre performance (70 min)
@ Filodrammatica, 19:30

POSTPONED!

  

✺ FRIDAY, 25 SEPTEBMER

Hero 4.0 – Business as Usual

Uroš Kaurin & Vito Weis | SLO
→ devised theatre / performance (80 min)
@ KUC Kalvarija, 19:30

* with Croatian surtitles

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✺ SATURDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER

Shame

Angela Stojanovska | MKD
→ devised solo performance (60 min)
@ KUC Kalvarija, 19:30

* with English surtitles

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The Place of a Good Female Worker

Bogavac, Dimovska, Stepanov, Crnjanski | SRB
→ cabaret- lecture performance (60 min)
@ KUC Kalvarija / terrace, 21:00

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✺ SUNDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER

I, David

Gabrijel Lazić & Nastja Uršula Virk | HR / SLO
→ documentary theatre performance (120 min / includes one interval)
@ Filodrammatica, 19:00

* with Croatian surtitles

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✺ MONDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER

Slovenian Transversal

Rok Kravanja | SLO
→ devised solo performance (70 min)
@ Filodrammatica, 19:30

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✺ TUESDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER

Pissed

Barbara Kukovec & Minca Lorenci | SLO
→ devised performance (60 min)
@ Filodrammatica, 19:30

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✺ WEDNESDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER

The Incredibly Unknown Case of Slavko G. from Kutina

Vedrana Klepica | HR
→ theatre performance based on documentary material (70 min)
@ Hrvatski kulturni dom na Sušaku, 19:30

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✺ THURSDAY, 1 OCTOBER

The Pelicot Trial

Milo Rau & Servane Dècle | SUI / FRA
→ screening of the documentary theatre performance (270 min / includes two intervals)
@ Filodrammatica, 18:00

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✺ FRIDAY, 2 OCTOBER

A conversation on censorship, institutions and spaces of resistance

Oliver Frljić & Ana Miljanić: 
→ in the framework of the Refleks program
@ Filodrammatica, 19:30

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ZOOM+IGRALKE FESTIVAL 2026: UNCONQUERED BODIES

When I say the word “body,” I first think of my own. But when I call other bodies to my mind, uninvited images of “perfect” bodies from magazine covers, advertisements, and reels flash before me—female, male, young, smiling, toned bodies. Irritated that I spontaneously imagine the bodies society persistently pushes as the norm and ideal, I have to make a conscious effort to cast off their pressure and imagine other kinds of bodies. Ordinary, imperfect ones, but also those I do not often see, neither in the media nor in reality: bodies that do not fit in, bodies from the fringes.

Around every corner or line of text, a trap constantly awaits us—tempting us to perceive our bodies as something uniquely ours, intimate or “natural,” while ignoring the extent to which societal rules and assumptions shape them, influencing our behavior, acceptance, or safety. The performances you are about to watch expose these constructs and shed light on various aspects of certain bodies and sexualities—those that are normative and those that elude norms, those that are privileged and those that are oppressed, those that are free and those that are endangered. The selected works embrace bodies in resistance and emancipation from often violent political and patriarchal frameworks, creating a space where, at least in the theater, they remain unconquered.

The festival opens with (b)oner in the throat, a performance by Serbian contemporary dancer and artist Miloš Janjić in which five young men with different sexual identities and performance practices share their experiences and perspectives on masculinity and its consequences for contemporary society, pulling the patriarchal bone from our throats in a moving theatrical gesture towards an alternative, gentler masculinity. The charismatic Slovenian duo Uroš Kaurin and Vito Weis take on the passing and running out of performance time in their follow-up to Hero 4.0 – Business as usual. They turn time itself into the subject of a playful game – and if, by the end, we decide that the time we have spent together was “worth it”, they will know they have done good business. From North Macedonia comes actress Angela Stojanovska, who in her intimate and witty solo performance Shame says goodbye to shame surrounding her own body, food and life in her country. Friends, artists and educators working across dance, music and theatre, Milena Minja Bogavac, Frosina Dimovska, Ista Stepanov and Dunja Crnjanski from Serbia bring us The Place of a Good Female Worker, a performance somewhere between a lecture, a panel discussion and a concert. Drawing on their experiences of precarious work in the arts and education, they question and fight for the role of culture and education in contemporary Serbian society. The collaborative project by Pula-based director Gabrijel Lazić and Nastja Uršula Virk, I, David, offers an innovative and powerful stage approach to the documentary story of David Heimer and his elusive body. The performance asks how far we are willing to go as a society to maintain clear boundaries between male and female, while also making it impossible to look at that binary division in quite the same way again. Slovenian actor and artist Rok Kravanja takes us on a journey through the mountain peaks of the Slovenian Transversal, where he encounters his father, the forces of nature, national and gender imperatives, and the process of discovering and embracing his own identity. Slovenian authors and performers Barbara Kukovec and Minca Lorenci, together with Croatian dramaturg Jasna Žmak, present the witty and incisive performance about the female body in need. Playing with the tension between holding back and letting go, control and surrender, they move through a series of everyday situations to repeatedly discover that there are countless reasons why we get Pissed. Croatian dramaturg, writer and director Vedrana Klepica presents her authorial project The Incredibly Unknown Case of Slavko G. from Kutina, a poetic, dreamlike and evocative attempt to reconstruct the memory of the forgotten theatre actor Slavko Goldschmidt, who performed in a prisoners’ theatre group in the Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II.

The festival concludes with a screening of the four-hour documentary performance The Pelicot Trial by one of the leading contemporary directors and documentary theatre-makers, Milo Rau, and dramaturg Servane Dècle. This international production, stripped down to the presentation of actual court documents and trial transcripts from a case that shook the world several years ago, exposes gender-based and domestic violence, holding up an unflinching mirror to rape culture. The performance was banned from being staged at last year’s (Ne)Bitef, but Serbian actors and cultural workers performed it nonetheless, resulting in a recording that was subsequently streamed across the region for a period of time. We will screen a censored version of the recording, in accordance with the wishes of Gisèle Pelicot’s daughter, and conclude the festival with a roundtable discussion on censorship in the arts led by theatre director and artist Oliver Frljić.

Join the festival audience, where, body next to body, we will see and acknowledge one another, hear each other breathe, laugh, and perhaps sigh at the same time. In a world where we are increasingly disconnected, politically fragmented, and capitalistically individualized—having long lost the possibility of any shared imagination of the future, progress, or salvation—the moments in which our bodies sit quietly and look in the same direction, at least in the theater, are already something to me. They are already a lot.

Sendi Sotlar
Kolektiv Igralke

 

 

Zoom+Igralke Festival was established in 2025 as a union of two festivals: the Zoom Festival, organized by Drugo more since 2010, and the Igralke Festival, launched in 2024 by the Igralke Collective. Sharing knowledge, resources, and organizational responsibilities is our survival strategy, allowing us to sustain ourselves and continue bringing to Rijeka current performances that surprise us and open our eyes to everything theatre can still be; from more intimate auteur works by younger generations from the region, presented by the Igralke Collective, to acclaimed international and often hybrid works that have become a hallmark of the Zoom Festival’s legacy.