24 Jul Spaces of Freedom: How Disobedience Found Different Voices on the Closing Night of the KROKODIL Festival
By: Katarina Jurčević, KROKODIL’s journalist for a day
The first early twilight was descending over the area in front of the Museum of Yugoslavia as visitors slowly gathered around the Studio Stage for the final program of this year’s KROKODIL festival. A few chairs, a plush crocodile as the recognizable symbol of the festival, and the murmur of an audience that refused to leave its spot even after two days of festivities served as the introduction to an evening intended not just to close the program, but to round off the central question of this year’s festival: the question of disobedience.
Under the title “Spaces of Freedom,” the closing program brought together authors whose answers to this question were as diverse as their literary worlds. Consequently, rather than a single definition of freedom, the audience was presented with a mosaic of voices. Through conversations, readings, and music, stories alternated: stories of women refusing to remain trapped in pre-assigned roles; of people united by a common struggle in moments of repression; of love that finds liberation only when it abandons the need to possess and explain; and of tenderness as the last refuge in a time that increasingly rewards harshness. Each participant opened a different space of freedom, showing that disobedience does not always have to look the same.
The evening was hosted by Mima Simić, who skillfully broke up serious topics with humor. The conversations with the writers did not resemble classic festival interviews; instead, they felt more like meetings between old acquaintances where jokes and literature constantly intertwined. It was precisely this immediacy that allowed discussions on trauma, identity, love, protests, and writing to remain accessible to the audience without losing their gravity.
The first to take the stage was last year’s winner of the Booka competition for the best unpublished manuscript, Hristina Radović Andrić. Responding to Mima’s remark that the wider reading public has only now had the chance to meet her literary voice, the author replied with a smile that for years she had written like people who secretly sing in the shower—for herself, far from the eyes of others. Behind the humor, however, lay the story of the long maturation process of a manuscript. A book years in the making, whose first draft was over four hundred pages long, finally found its way to readers after the author gathered the courage to submit it to the competition.
As Hristina read excerpts from the novel Arjačkinje barjačkinje, koga ćete, her illustrations flashed on the screen next to the stage, further opening the world she had built. Speaking about the core of the book, she noted that the novel was a sort of “settling of accounts” after the age of fifty—an attempt to articulate the pain that had followed her through life. She described writing as a therapeutic act and the book as something that brought her a new life. She expressed special gratitude to her editor at Booka, who helped the manuscript find its final form.
At the center of the novel is Nura Nuh, a protagonist whose life is constantly defined by the roles society imposes on her. She is always someone’s daughter, granddaughter, partner, or mother, and she is never “good enough” because society decides so. In a world where a woman is constantly expected to be something more, better, or different, Nura gradually arrives at the question of who remains when all those demands are stripped away.
Freedom in her story is neither easy nor painless. It does not come as a sudden escape from limitations, but through a difficult process of breaking with the patterns that shaped her. To leave what is familiar means facing loss, loneliness, and one’s own wounds. This is why Nura Nuh becomes free only when she stops living exclusively through the expectations of others—in other words, when she finds a space where she can exist outside the roles assigned to her.
If Hristina Radović Andrić spoke of freedom won from within, through confronting one’s own life and the roles imposed by society, the next guest showed that freedom is never exclusively a personal matter.
Mima Simić welcomed Dragoslava Barzut by reminding her of a lunch they shared and joking that the audience had been waiting for her new novel for far too long. Since her previous one—written in just two months and later nominated for the NIN Award—was, as they laughingly concluded, a “product of trauma,” Mima invited the audience to “break Dragoslava’s heart” so she would write a new one as soon as possible. The ensuing laughter broke the seriousness of the topic, and Barzut, accepting the game, offered a form of “atonement”: something the audience had not yet had the chance to hear—an excerpt from her unpublished short story “Commonality in Three Scenes” (Zajedništvo u tri prizora).
The story, inspired by the protests in Serbia, takes place in a police station. However, a space that could be understood as a site of control and limitation becomes, in her text, a place of unexpected connection. People who do not know each other, with different life stories and experiences, become close because they are linked by the same situation, the same goal, and the same struggle.
In that excerpt, freedom is not depicted as something an individual achieves for themselves. It arises through solidarity, through recognizing one’s own experience in the experience of others, and through the willingness not to remain alone when it is most necessary to stand by someone. We can sense that the “commonality” from the title is not just a description of the relationship between the characters, but also the key idea of the story: that resistance is not built in isolation, but among people who decide to truly see one another.
It is in this transition from the individual to the collective that one of the important threads of this year’s KROKODIL is reflected. Disobedience was presented not just as a personal act of refusal, but as a possibility to open a space for a different world through shared experience.
Between the literary conversations, the area in front of the Museum of Yugoslavia was filled with music. Katarina Peović, whom the audience had heard earlier in the day during a 1-on-1 talk with Mima Simić, took the stage this time as Fronta. This brief musical interlude was not a departure from the important theme, but its continuation in another language. Songs like the Serbian version of Bella Ciao, Moša Pijade, and Revolucija maintained the evening’s atmosphere, reminding us that ideas of resistance, disobedience, and freedom are transmitted not only through literature but also through music that has accompanied various social struggles for decades.
After the short musical break, Emilija Ljutić and Aleksandar Petrović took the stage, representing the longlist for the Štefica Cvek Award. The conversation about the selection of works also opened the question of the criteria by which literature is read and valued today. As emphasized during the talk, literature is not just an aesthetic act, but also a space from which one can speak about society, politics, and experiences that often remain on the margins. The idea that “the personal is political”—one of the key premises of the award—naturally tied back to the evening’s theme; namely, the many different ways literature can create spaces of freedom.
Mima Simić then introduced Bojan Savić Ostojić as an author she described as “still waters run deep” (tiha voda breg roni). With a smile, she explained her comparison: he is an author who publishes constantly but is also a translator who approaches translation in a highly authorial way.
Speaking about his novel Lusi (Lucy), Bojan explained that the titular character is not one specific woman. Lucy is, as he said, perhaps multiple women, or perhaps none that actually exist. To the question of who she really is, he replied that she is a “synthesis of all the girls we see but never get to know”—a figure who exists simultaneously as a memory, an impression, and a projection.
However, Lucy is not the only important character in the novel. One of its main protagonists is Belgrade. The city, its clubs, nightlife, and the music of the early 2000s are not just a background to the story, but the space in which it is shaped. Bojan pointed out that Lucy can hardly be imagined outside of Belgrade, a city whose rhythm, gathering places, and cultural scene left a mark on the world of the novel. Alongside bands like EKV and Azra, he also mentioned those who didn’t remain part of the broader cultural memory but defined the atmosphere of a time, such as the band Krš.
The excerpt he read followed the narrator’s relationship with the elusive Lucy—the need to be constantly near her, to tell her what remained unsaid, and to find an answer in a relationship that is constantly slipping away. Yet, the final moment of that search does not bring the expected encounter, but something quieter: the realization that he no longer feels the need to reach out to her. In this shift in relation to one’s own desire, one can recognize one of the possible spaces of freedom—not as a final resolution, but as an acceptance that some stories remain unfinished.
If the previous voices of the evening spoke of freedom through community or an open break with imposed roles, Bojan’s excerpt opened a more intimate space—one where a person frees themselves from the need to possess, explain, or fully hold onto that which escapes them.
The final literary guest of the evening was Ognjenka Lakićević. She took the stage admitting to the audience something perhaps unexpected from an author with such a recognized literary voice: that she is still not quite used to reading in front of an audience and feels stage fright every time. Mima Simić, as she did throughout the evening, responded with humor, reminding her that she is now a famous author and must accept this new role.
The conversation then naturally turned to contemporary reading and writing. Ognjenka spoke about how much it means to her that poetry is being read again, especially since, at the beginning of her writing career, she often heard that poetry no longer had an audience. In her case, however, poetry became the very space where readers found themselves—readers who recognize vulnerability, tenderness, and the need for a different language.
Holding her poems in her hands, as twilight fell over the space in front of the Museum of Yugoslavia, Ognjenka read several poems, including Horoscope, You’re at Home, You Can Go, You Can’t, and others. Her verses opened themes of closeness, but also of that internal space where a person tries to remain themselves despite the pressures of the world around them.
In Ognjenka Lakićević’s poetics, freedom is not separated from tenderness. In her book The Darkness Almost Kidnapped Me (Zamalo me je oteo mrak), resistance does not come through the rejection of feelings, but precisely through their preservation. In a world that often demands people be stronger, faster, and less sensitive, she reminds us that the right to vulnerability is also a form of disobedience.
Thus, we can say that freedom in her poems is found not only in grand gestures of resistance but also in everyday choices: in the refusal of indifference, in the preservation of empathy, and in the willingness to see another’s pain. Following themes of family relationships, social pressures, and collective struggles opened throughout the evening, Ognjenka’s poetry offered yet another answer to the question of what it means to be free: to preserve the capacity to feel.
After strong applause, the literary portion of the program gave way to music. Fronta returned to the stage to close the XVIII KROKODIL Festival, which this year lasted from July 3 to 4, while the conversations about disobedience and freedom, conducted through literature, naturally continued in song.
Ultimately, we can say that during the final evening, as the daylight slowly faded over the space in front of the Museum of Yugoslavia, the literary voices that took turns on stage spoke not just about freedom, but about the paths toward it. Some led through pain and confronting the past, some through commonality and solidarity, some through accepting what remains unfinished, and some through the preservation of tenderness.
In the end, it is worth highlighting that during the two days of the KROKODIL festival, the audience had the opportunity to hear various answers to the question of what it means to be free. In conversations with authors like Lea Ypi, Åsne Seierstad, Monika Herceg, and Rachel Kushner, as well as in the final “Spaces of Freedom” program, freedom did not appear as a final definition, but as an ever-changing experience. Sometimes it is the right to speak about what has long been suppressed; sometimes it is responsibility toward others; sometimes it is the refusal to accept injustice; and sometimes it is the courage to remain oneself.
The strength of this year’s festival lay precisely in that diversity of answers. “Spaces of Freedom” did not point to a single destination to be reached, but to a multitude of spaces that people create anew—through literature, music, solidarity, and the willingness not to remain silent when it is easiest to look away.
To conclude, let us remember one of Ognjenka’s verses: Tenderness is the last stronghold of freedom.
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