The Mirëdita, Dobar Dan festival was supposed to take place at the end of June this year, only to be cancelled at the last minute by the Serbian authorities. Why was it shut down and what does this mean for the future of the festival?
Organised across the borders by Belgrade’s Youth Initiative for Human Rights and Civic Initiatives and Prishtina’s Integra NGO, the Mirëdita, Dobar Dan festival has been running since 2014, merging “art, culture, advocacy and public debate in one platform” (‘mirëdita’ and ‘dobar dan’ mean ‘hello’ in Albanian and Serbian respectively).
Held on alternative years in the two capitals, Belgrade and Prishtina, the two-way festival is no stranger to political pressure and protests, but this year saw a worrying rise in opposition during the weeks leading up to the 27th-29th June dates, resulting in physical intimidation by street thugs encouraged by top-level officials and politicians, who also pushed a damaging wave of disinformation. No one in authority stepped in to stop the thugs and neo-Nazi groups of Delije Sever, People’s Patrol, Group 451 and Zetropa Serbia from occupying Dorćol Platz, the festival’s venue, or from graffiti-ing the walls or threatening anyone wanting to attend. The organisers appealed for help and sought to work with the authorities to remove potential flashpoints for violence but the interior ministry failed to intervene and when the city police cited ‘security concerns’, a ban swiftly followed – the only official response to the situation.
Both sides of the festival have attracted opposition, but it’s the Belgrade festival that has faced the most threats. This summer brought an alignment of political events that have been used to feed targeting of the cultural festival: EU-brokered talks failed to take place on 26th June between Serbia and Kosovo to progress improving relations, Serbia’s pro-Russian government was reported to be selling weapons indirectly to Ukraine, the UN passed a resolution to mark 11th July as an international day of commemoration for the 1995 genocide carried out by Serbs in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Mirëdita, Dobar Dan 2023
“The unprecedented politicisation of the festival is clear,” says Tijana Đuknić, programme coordinator for Youth Initiative for Human Rights. “Serbia’s growing right-wing political climate enables hate campaigns against the festival from state-controlled media and political figures – including minister of culture Nikola Selaković, minister of family welfare and demography Milica Đurđević Stamenkovski, deputy prime minister Aleksandar Vulin, mayor of Belgrade Aleksandar Šapić and minister of the interior Ivica Dačić. Their desire to maintain political control means that they have used the festival as a scapegoat, diverting attention from these sensitive negotiations and issues. As a result, ordinary people and cultural workers who want to encourage dialogue and contribute to peacebuilding and normalisation of relations at a grassroots level are unwittingly exploited to serve nationalistic political ends.”
“Let’s put some facts on the table,” says Kushtrim Koliqi, co-founder and organiser in Prishtina for Integra NGO. “Until now the Serbian government were never publicly against the festival. They were against Mirëdita, Dobar Dan through their proxies, the hooligans, but they never declared themselves against it. This campaign started the moment we published the 2024 dates. The first person to speak out was the acting mayor of Belgrade, then it followed like a chain reaction with officials and politicians accusing us of things like being propagandists in order to maintain the discourse. One of the most hardcore statements came from the minister of the interior when he said he would not offer policing but instead wanted to ask the citizens to take care of it. So basically he directly invited the hooligans to take care of us.”
But was this an inevitable if not predictable outcome, given the festival’s remit and the worsening political situation in Serbia and tense relationship with Kosovo?
“Despite the difference in atmosphere compared to previous years, the banning of the festival was unexpected,” says Đuknić. “It has been running for 11 years and though far-right radical groups have protested almost every year, politicisation to this extent has never happened before. The difference is that major political figures are both aligning with far-right extremists and leading a hate campaign. It’s important to note that, apart from these extremists groups and hooligans, ordinary citizens have not protested against Mirëdita, Dobar Dan.”
The contrast with previous years is also evident in police conduct. Historically, the force handled thugs and protestors efficiently, but this year they failed to protect the festival participants and organisers. Despite seeing no increase in the number of protestors, the police were significantly outnumbered at the festival’s opening night on 27th June which was to include the play Father and Father and a concert by La Fazani. This led to performers, tech crew and organisers being surrounded and then locked in the venue, with the police unable to escort them out or provide protection. The festival participants and organisers were effectively held hostage.
“The police were our main partners in Serbia, they were very professional,” says Koliqi. “And there weren’t 200,000 protestors, there were barely 100. We have had far bigger protests where the police did their work and everything was fine, so this was not something they couldn’t manage. Up until the moment the ban happened we were still telling them, ‘there’s going to be a huge backlash on you guys so what are you going to do about it?’ ”
Meanwhile the festival had swiftly and diplomatically made changes to avoid events on June 28 clashing with the Serbian religious and national Vidovan holiday – the programme announced a replacement day of “Sightseeing and Cultural Exploration of Belgrade”. But, as Đuknić observes, “it became evident that the political elite’s concern was not with the date but with the festival itself, creating intensified obstacles that led to the ban, with participants and guests who had arrived from Kosovo being illegally detained and then deported from the country.”
“There were also local elections in early June which brought other problems,” says Koliqi. “But basically they were milking a case for its own propaganda. These politicians don’t care about the festival but they’re using and abusing it to keep up their political profiles as nationalistic Serbs, against Kosovars who are their sworn enemies. Having exhausted everything else, the only thing left to attack was the festival.”
Koliqi is also the director of Father and Father, produced by Integra and which was written by Kosovan playwright Jeton Neziraj. “The play is a universal story about the trauma of a family after the war,” says Neziraj, “and in the almost three years since it premiered there have been dozens of performances in Kosovo and the region. Mirëdita, Dobar Dan was a good opportunity to appear in Belgrade, however, this time it did not happen.”

Father and Father – Integra
Neziraj heads Prishtina-based Qendra Multimedia which regularly staged shows in Serbia’s state theatres but five or six years ago saw this starting to change. “The directors of the theatres were either afraid to bring in shows from Kosovo, or they simply didn’t want them because they knew it would only bring trouble to their theatres from the authorities or the public. We tried to take our play Negotiating Peace to Belgrade last year but it was a mission impossible where they found all sorts of excuses to reject us, including ‘summer heat gets unbearable in June’. So even a play that talks about the region’s difficult peace-building process is perceived as ‘suspicious’. The Serbian politics of these past few years have invested a great deal in presenting the (necessary) cultural cooperation between Kosovo and Serbia as a Trojan horse, stigmatising it and using it for internal populist purposes.”
“It’s certainly weird to see the majority of the government and the most powerful political stakeholders turning against the festival,” adds Koliqi.
Qendra is a major pioneer in the region of nurturing cultural connections. “Dozens of joint performances and cultural events have happened,” says Neziraj. “Among them is the Polip International Literature Festival in Prishtina, co-organised and curated by Qendra and Belgrade literary group Beton for 15 years until 2023. We also co-produce stage shows with joint teams of Kosovan and Serbian artists, produce long-term cultural collaborations with literary association Krokodil, activist cultural organisation Hartefact and the Center for Cultural Decontamination, all of them based in Belgrade.”
The fact that there are other collaborative efforts linking Serbia means that Đuknić and Koliqi are able to firmly state that a ‘festival in exile’ isn’t an option – it is here to stay, although it’s still too early to clarify the situation for the next Belgrade edition.
“The Serbia side of the festival was always supposed to be in the capital,” says Koliqi. “We discussed this in the past but we came to realise that the festival has to be in both capitals. It’s not a long event and from the start our challenge has been how to attract mainstream people within those three or four days. We already attract like-minded people who agree on most of the things we agree on and who appreciate our shows, exhibitions and talks. So we insist on the festival happening only in the capitals because it’s there that we can best connect with that mainstream.”
“If anything,” adds Đuknić, “we have learned that we need more initiatives of similar character in Belgrade, and in fact they’re crucial in times like this when tensions between the two societies are rising.”
They argue that if Mirëdita, Dobar Dan responds by making changes then it is making compromises – therefore going into exile is not a reasonable action. Interestingly, earlier in 2024 a mini version of the festival took place in Vienna with three events across two days to bring together Serbian and Kosovan migrants there.
“Maybe we’ll continue with it, but really it was just a test,” says Koliqi. “The core elements of the festival need to be preached in Belgrade. We can come up with alternative ideas which can look good or sexy but then we risk the point of our mission.”
In the lead-up to the ban, the international community were overwhelmingly silent and it was only afterwards that they started to publicly articulate reactions in support of the festival. “We have now been meeting with them and asking why didn’t they react,” says Koliqi. “Why weren’t they proactively reacting when it was most needed, why didn’t they lobby the authorities as we know they can. We’re angry and we’re very disappointed.”
In some ways, the attack can be viewed as a generational phenomenon, the insecurity of Serbia’s older war generation who fear losing their grip on the country. However Đuknić isn’t so sure: “It’s generational only because of the consequence of a systematic effort to discourage and block critical thinking and regional collaboration in order to preserve political power. Regional collaboration on the other hand is essential for dealing with the past and progressing towards sustainable peace. The younger generations don’t have direct experience of the Balkan wars but they’re undoubtedly impacted by them, and they need to learn from and listen to the experiences and perspectives of their peers from neighbouring countries to prevent history from repeating itself. It’s essential to do this when the prevailing narrative denies war crimes, promotes nationalism and fosters hatred.”
“When you look at the age of the people who blocked entry to Dorćol Platz, you can see that most of them were young, born after 2000,” says Neziraj. “The injection of hatred and fascism into them has been carried out within the ‘democratic’ Serbia that emerged from the wars of the 90s. This is terrible, even terrifying. But the same is true in Kosovo where young people can also be radicalised, they’re also a generation that has not experienced war but feel they’re indebted to the past because they didn’t have the chance to contribute to our freedom. They want to prove they love Kosovo, and they are vocal in this and can become violent whenever this is required.”
Banning Mirëdita, Dobar Dan demonstrates how art in general/theatre in particular can be vulnerable to physical violence yet feared at the same time. “But I don’t see anything paradoxical in that,” says Neziraj. “Theatre carries weight, that’s why they fear it.”
“The very ability of critical theatre and art to foster a dynamic interplay and synergy between critical reflection and empathy creates a significant threat to authoritarian regimes,” adds Đuknić. “And just as essential and feared is the creative process itself, which demands engagement, reflection and the establishment of connections and understanding among participants. It challenges the established norms and unsettles those in power. Art is vital for societal health and progress, so the banning of a festival that nurtures all this speaks volumes about the current state of our political regime.”
“Everything went well in Kosovo last year,” observes Koliqi. “Of course we were accused and attacked in the media and online, but we didn’t experience any physical action against us. If we now make any radical change to the festival’s parts, then what’s the point of calling the whole thing Mirëdita, Dobar Dan?”
For more information, visit: mireditadobardan.com
Further reading: review of Father and Father
Nick Awde is a journalist, playwright, editor, critic and producer. Based in the UK, he is co-director of Morecambe's Alhambra Theatre. Books include Equal Stages (diversity and inclusion in theatre), Mellotron, Women In Islam, and translations of plays by other writers. Much of his work focuses on ethnoconflict and language/cultural genocide.