Croatia Festival Brings Theatrical Dreams to Zadar

The festival’s diverse programme of theatrical offerings runs until Friday this week with a series of premieres, concerts, multimedia installations, exhibitions and a selection of short movies.

‘Zadar of Dreams’ is now the only international theatre festival in Croatia after the demise of the world-renowned ‘Eurokaz’ event.

The play at the centre of attention this year is the Croatian premiere of ‘A Tomb for Boris Davidovic’, a staging of the well-known novel by a Yugoslav writer Danilo Kis about political deception, betrayal and murder.

The director of the play, Ivica Buljan, comes from Croatia, while the producers, Hartefact and Bitef, are from Belgrade.  

The 18th annual festival is seen as another way to attract tourists to Zadar on Croatia’s Dalmatian coast at the peak of the holiday season.

Kristijan Micic, who started ‘Zadar of Dreams’ in 1997 and now runs its artistic programme, said that its key value was independence.

“An independent civic cultural and intellectual scene, independent from the media and the profit dogma, must exist just the same [as ones which are not independent] and be actively involved in social processes. Otherwise no strategy or funds will help us,” said Micic.

He explained that the festival is trying to address problems in society.

“Our society needs to become a true civil society for the first time in history, while social models founded on a political, military, nationalistic and religious basis, or ideologies, should be put where they belong - in a museum, in history,” he said.