Subversive Film

Subversive Film hosted their 18th Subversive Festival from May 19-31 2025 in Zagreb, Croatia. The theme for this year’s festival was “Age of Conflict: Escalating Wars, Global Migrations,” which combined political theory with the art of film, boldly spotlighting key aspects of contemporary reality for Palestinians “under the magnifying glass.” The festival included film screenings as well as a series of lectures and talks that expanded on the relevant theoretical topics that emerged from the film festival. The 18th Subversive Festival officially began at the Zagreb Kinoteka cinema on Monday, May 19th. As a part of the lecture and talk series, the festival brought together authors who resist the economization and dehumanization of film, and instead choose, in their practices, to focus on critical reflection and nurture the spirit of experimentation in order to resist falling into false neutrality and conventional forms of representation. The films screened at the festival competed for the Wild Dreamer (“Dragan Rubeša”) awards, which included categories like Best Documentary and Best Feature Film. This year’s selection featured forty feature, documentary, and hybrid films, including a few prominent art house titles, which have been screened or awarded at many of the world’s most prestigous film festivals. The rich program featured new films by renowned authors such as Radu Jude, Želimir Žilnik, Joshua Oppenheimer, Mike Leigh, Dea Kulumbegashvili, Ira Sachs, Alain Guiraudie and Matthew Rankin.