This year, there will be no Bitef, our largest and oldest international theater festival - at least not in its institutional form. Through a series of destructive and unprofessional decisions - drastic budget cuts,  cancelling of the position of artistic director and, finally, open censorship of the program - the founder has taken every step to ensure that Bitef does not happen this year. First, the city authorities disempowered it, then postponed and reshaped it, and finally tried to silence it - because even after almost six decades Bitef has remained free-spirited, critical, loud, and rebellious.

But instead of silence and retreat, a determined response from Bitef’s diverse communities followed. “The wiser side does not give in, the wiser side organizes” - this is the lesson we learned from the student movement. By responding forcefully to the censorship of Bitef, numerous actors from the local and European theatre scene came to the idea of ne:Bitef 2025 and, under the slogan “Bitef is wherever we gather!”, decided not to accept the erasure of an important history and the living legacy of critical theater. Ne:Bitef is at once a “no” to censorship and a non-institutional, independent Bitef - a continuation of the festival that belongs to the community, and not to any secretariat, board, or government. Censored Bitef program has become a gathering point: around it, numerous cultural workers, organizations, allies, audiences, and concerned citizens have come together. With no money, with scarce resources, but with a lot of enthusiasm, solidarity, and unpaid labour, we are taking responsibility to keep the festival alive - in a guerrilla way, across several locations in the city, from 15 to 18 December 2025. In doing so, we show that the scene does not accept censorship and refuses to remain silent about it - “Shame has to change sides”, as Giselle Pelicot would say.

Ne:Bitef program preserves what has always made Bitef dangerous, exciting, and important: art that does not flatter power. Belgrade will still get to experience the performance of the censored international production that exposes gender-based and domestic violence, The Pelicot Trial by Milo Rau and Servane Dècle. We will present new works by emerging, rebellious local authors - Aleksander Zain, the collective Action Committee, Andreja Kargačin, and Ana Janković - who take a critical stance toward the repressive system in which they create, exploring the limits of artistic form, the precarious position of labour in the arts, and the experience of protest and togetherness. There will also be a screening of the performance about police violence, Bros by Romeo Castellucci, panel discussions on abolitionist feminism and critical art through withdrawal and/or resistance, a solidarity concert by the technical crew of the Berlin theatre Volksbühne, and shared meals. A festival is a public space and an opportunity for us to gather, learn, and engage in an exchange. But, maybe most importantly, it is a testament to our capacity and decision to care. That is why we are not giving up.

For us, ne:Bitef is not a substitute for a festival that has been seized and silenced, but a struggle to return Bitef to those to whom it belongs - the cultural community, the audience, and critical thought. Bitef was born from the spirit of the student uprisings of 1968. For decades it has been a meeting place for bold creators, dissident voices, anti-colonial practices, and critique of both capitalism and authoritarianism. Today, through ne:Bitef, that spirit returns to its origins: revolt, protest, and the dream of freedom.

At the same time, we are aware that this is not a long-term solution, but only a step in strategic organizing. Ne:Bitef is made possible by an enormous amount of unpaid work, exhaustion, and risk undertaken by many people who are making it happen. We do not believe in romanticizing guerrilla work: our goal is not to permanently move a cultural good into a non-institutional precariat and sustain it through unpaid labour, but to show the extent to which the competent institutions have betrayed their own purpose and how urgently we must rethink and rebuild them.