Ostermeier and Milo Rau Bring NE:Bitef to 60 Belgrade Sites
What the second, self-organized NE:Bitef looked like: 60 Belgrade locations hosting Thomas Ostermeier, Milo Rau and Gob Squad, capped by a panel and cake at CZKD.
When cake was cut in the courtyard of the Center for Cultural Decontamination on Sunday evening, the candles on it were not marking an official jubilee. Bitef turns 60 this year, and that anniversary was supposed to be celebrated on Belgrade’s biggest stages. Instead, for the second year running, it was celebrated on the street: in courtyards, cafes and private apartments, with no institution putting its name on the event.
The second NE:Bitef, a self-organized version of the festival born out of censorship and the absence of an official edition, ran on Sunday, September 20, from noon to 6 p.m., across 60 locations in Belgrade. More than 100 local artists and cultural workers, together with 60 curators chosen by the community itself, filled cultural centers, galleries, university buildings, streets and squares with a program spanning theater, film, performance and talks on the festival’s own history. We reported on the arrival of Thomas Ostermeier and Pussy Riot in our preview ahead of the weekend; Sunday showed who else turned up beyond that preview.
Who Talked Where
The program branched out by address, each stop with its own guest and its own curator:
- Faculty of Applied Arts: Thomas Ostermeier, longtime artistic director of Berlin’s Schaubühne, in conversation with theater scholar Ivana Medenic
- Elektropionir, Cetinjska 15: Swiss director Milo Rau, in conversation with director Nikita Milivojevic
- Rectorate of the University of Arts: Italian company Motus, Enrico Casagrande and his creative partner (named as Daniela Franceschini by Danas, and as Daniela Nicolò by two other sources), in conversation with professor Aleksandra Jovicevic
- Hop.La!, Uzun Mirkova 10: Slovenian director Dragan Zivadinov with director Irena Ristic, joined via video link by Oliver Frljic, Ivana Sajko and Borut Separovic, in a conversation moderated by Anja Susa
Why the Festival Works Without an Institution
Some of the guests at NE:Bitef were also a practical choice, not just a gesture of solidarity. According to a report by Danas, Motus and Gob Squad withdrew from this year’s official, 59th Bitef, and performed at this self-organized edition instead. The first NE:Bitef followed the same pattern in December 2025, staged as part of the cultural scene’s response to the cancellation of the official edition.
By evening everything converged at CZKD, where the finale’s centerpiece was a panel titled “Art, Resistance and Solidarity.” Ana Vujanovic and Ana Miljanic moderated the conversation, with Milo Rau, Simon Will and Helen de Bever of Gob Squad as speakers. The same evening was also set to feature a joint program by Maria Masha Alyokhina and Erik Breitenbach of Pussy Riot, combining live music, text and political performance. Over the following seven days, CZKD will double as an archive, collecting photographs and objects from all 60 locations, with the program backed by the Goethe-Institut.
Visiting 60 micro-stages in a single day was, in practical terms, impossible, and that is probably the point. A festival measured by the number of dots on a map rather than the number of seats in one hall is hard to shut down entirely: closing a single institution is enough to send it into a courtyard, a cafe or a university hallway instead. When the cake was cut at CZKD that evening for the 60th anniversary, what was being celebrated there was not an institution, but the network of people who kept the festival alive before it and will keep it alive after.
