Review: Antigone: In the Language of Kings

Location	17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
Theater	Latino Theater Company and Getty Villa Museum Outdoor Classical Theater
Date of Performance	September 11, 2026
Language	English, Spanish, Nahuatl
Photos by	Craig Schwartz

Review By Amanda L. Andrei 

The resinous scent of burning copal drifts through the arena. A grief-filled keen pierces the air. And a specter of death glides through a battlefield, sweeping corpses into black billows. 

No, we’re not in ancient Greece. We’re sitting in the stone tiers of the Getty Villa, only a hundred yards away from the quartz sands of Malibu beaches. As the stars appear in the night sky, the cast of Antigone: In the Language of Kings graces the outdoor stage before us.

Adapted and translated into English, Spanish, and Nahuatl by Evelina Fernández from Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone, the play places the doomed descendants of the House of Thebes within pre-conquest Tenochtitlan. With the wide open-air theater transformed into the ancient capital of the Mexihcahtl people, director Luis Jose Valenzuela fluently combines athletic dance, haunting songs, and spectacular images of death amidst the imperial court’s arguments, pleas, and threats (and surprisingly, even some Spanglish humor).

In the power vacuum remaining from the departure of the tlahtoani (ruler) Oedipo, his sons vie for the throne in a civil war that kills both princes (a movement-based narration beautifully choreographed by Urbanie Lucero). When their uncle Klion (Cástulo Guerra) assumes the throne, he forbids one of the brothers from receiving a proper burial, effectively violating the sacred laws of the ancestors and the divine. Only Antíkona takes a stand against this moral tyranny and state violence. 

As Antíkona conducts funerary rites as a shadowy figure, decries the oppressive Aztec ruler, and addresses the masked Mexihcahtl koro (chorus), Esperanza América is utterly royal as a grief-stricken sister and morally upright citizen. It’s a pleasure to watch her verbally spar with Guerra or admonish her timid and law-abiding sister, Ixmene (Alexis B. Santiago). Antíkona’s intensity is matched by her fiancé, Hemon (an ardent José Eduardo Moreno). Their shared scene marks personal tragedy not only for the couple, but also as a political tragedy for the entire empire, victims of a ruler’s arrogant and destructive power. 

The ancestral Mesoamerican music ensemble Xochi Cuicatl (Flower Songs Music) creates a ceremonial soundscape for the sumptuous visuals (scenic design by François-Pierre Couture and lighting design by “Lee” Xinyuan Li). Catarina Copelli’s costumes burst with feathered plumes, bold lines of traditional makeup, and expressive masks. The effect is reminiscent not only of Western theater’s Mediterranean roots, but also calls upon the unique design elements of pre-conquest America. Similarly, Fernández’s translation choices between English, Spanish, and Nahuatl impart a sense of rich linguistic texture and social registers, especially when the koro sings in Nahuatl to remember and honor deceased family members.

Ultimately, this operatic performance serves as a warning to tyrants and the morally weak and silent. In voices that fill the semi-circles of the theater, their message reverberates against the villa’s darkened hills and the Pacific’s foaming tides: 

A good ruler should be like a great tree that gives shade, that gives cover, that gives shelter.

Nelli in itlahtoh. (Her words are true.)

Spotlight on Ryan Radusinovic, Founder of Balkan Comedy Night

In the Photos: Ryan Radusinovic
Photo Credit: Kayla Adanalian

Review by Tanja M. Laden

35 years ago, in the midst of the breakup of Yugoslavia, it would have been practically impossible to imagine a North American comedy club jam-packed with people tied to different Balkan countries celebrating their cultural differences and similarities through laughter. And we’re not talking about a chuckle here or there; we’re talking the kind of gut-busting hilarity that brings tears to your eyes, makes your cheeks hurt, and has you scoping out the club for the nearest bathroom so you don’t pee your pants. That’s exactly how funny, and cathartic, Balkan Comedy Night is.

Established in 2023, this nationally touring comedy showcase is the brainchild of 40-year-old Ryan Radusinovic, whose own Serbo-Montenegrin heritage inspired him to assemble a group of talented comics in major cities across the U.S. and Canada in order to bring audiences together and joke about all things Balkan. Nothing’s off-limits. Dysfunctional family dynamics, hypocrisy, confused identities, colorful curses—it’s all fodder for the brave stage comics who try to get the ultimate response from the crowd: a unified, uproarious, and delighted round of giggles, guffaws, and applause, followed by the inner satisfaction of knowing that a specific joke landed just right.

For Radusinovic, however, the road to Balkan Comedy Night has been a bit circuitous. In fact, he never really set out to work in comedy at all. He earned his degree in Radio-TV-Film from California State University, Fullerton, hoping to become a screenwriter. But while still in college, he started doing stand-up and realized seeing people’s immediate reactions mattered more to him than writing screenplays that wouldn’t be produced until years later, if ever.

Like many people from the Balkans, Radusinovic’s story is complex. He was born in Anaheim, California, a first-generation American on his Montenegrin-born father’s side and a third-generation on his Montenegrin-American mother’s side. His parents divorced when he was a kid, and he spent time with his mom and stepfather in rural Alaska, Louisiana, and Washington state before moving to Downey, California, to live with his maternal grandparents and quickly reconnecting with his biological dad, thus bringing him back closer to his heritage. Around this time, Radusinovic remembers his own experiences growing up with his uncles who would do impressions of their flamboyant relatives and recount wild stories of being Serbian in 1970s Southern California. “They would just have me dying laughing,” he recalls.

Radusinovic got his comedy start at Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank. Yet while he came up in the wider American comedy milieu, he found himself drifting into the extremely successful and increasingly robust Latin American comedy scene as an opener for the late Jeff Garcia. And that’s kind of where the idea for Balkan Comedy Night came about. Radusinovic wanted to bring larger awareness to Balkan culture by shining a spotlight on its mentality and showing its people in a positive way. “Instead of always being villains,” he quips. “In Hollywood movies, if they’re Eastern European, they’re the bad guy.”

However, it wasn’t exactly easy in the beginning. In the debut edition of Balkan Comedy Night at the California Room at the Ice House in Pasadena, in the face of a phalanx of Croatians wearing checkered shirts from one comic’s local church, Radusinovic “half bombed” his set. A couple of months later, however, he tried again, and as he describes it, “We just hit the ground running.” From there, it became a monthly event in different towns, with Balkan Comedy Night drawing on local talent in each city. The comics themselves are wide-ranging, including recurring performers Vic Gjonaj and Stanko Zovak, as well as those from across the Balkan diaspora. They represent countries ranging from Albania and Romania to Bulgaria and Bosnia and everywhere in between. Sometimes the jokes are personal, sometimes they’re universal, but either way, they’re always relatable to a crowd hungering for community, laughter, and most of all, recognition of a rich, colorful heritage.

Today, Radusinovic is deftly balancing a complex history with a passion for comedy, lots of travel, his own recent baptism in the Serbian Orthodox Church, and a job as a creative director for a TV startup. Plus, a big part of a comic’s success is often due to the loyalty, devotion, encouragement, and unwavering support of a loved one, which Radusinovic is lucky enough to have in a long-term relationship. And if comedy doesn’t work out? He’s thinking he’ll get his paramedic’s license. For now, however, Radusinovic is joining Macedonian-Australian headliner My Cousin Vlad as a featured comic on Vlad’s eight-city tour of Southeastern Europe this September. Meanwhile, after selling out shows in 15 cities across the U.S. and Canada, Balkan Comedy Night will be waiting for him when he gets back.

“I could not imagine not having stand-up. I don’t know what the heck I’d do with my life,” says Radusinovic. “I’ll just keep doing it. And I have no idea where it’s going to lead me, but it’s leading me to some good places.”

Review: “Green Corridors”

Location	2525 Michigan Ave., Building T1, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Theater	City Garage Theatre
Date of Performance	August 22, 2026
Language	English (translated from the Ukrainian)
Photos by	Paul Rubenstein

Review by Allie Rigby

What if the way out of a war-torn country is just as grim as staying? 

This past weekend in Santa Monica, Green Corridors by Ukrainian playwright Natalka Vorozhbyt opened at City Garage Theatre, more than 6,000 miles away from Ukraine. The play, translated by John Freedman with Nataliia Bratus, cleverly switches between the struggles of four women fleeing Ukraine for Europe and a film shoot. Absurdity is never far from the stage, which is true for many productions at City Garage Theatre. Director Frédérique Michel and Producer Charles A. Duncombe often feature plays that stir conversations and ask viewers to listen.

On stage, the women (Martha Duncan, Alicia Ivanhoe, Georgia Orchid, and Angela Beyer) bicker in custom lines, shuffle back and forth, embrace the monotony of waiting, and struggle to find physical and emotional safety in their ever-changing surroundings. Some fixate on their abandoned cats back in Ukraine (Martha Duncan as Refugee from Chernihiv, Cat Lover) while others remain in shock from terrible violence inflicted upon them (Georgia Orchid as Refugee from Bucha, The Manicurist). Throughout the play, they also try to discern which men can be trusted: customs officers (Ricky Lee Grove, Dennis Kimmel)? a seemingly nice Austrian Citizen (Ricky Lee Grove)? A German man named Hans (Eric Trosch)? In the case of The Manicurist, they also deal with oblivious women who mean while, but rub their war-free privilege in their face (Cruz St. James as European Woman). 

Green Corridors is a smart play that remains cognizant of itself. As in, it is a play that is aware of its play nature–of what stories are told and why. Dennis Kimmel, as Assistant Director, expresses this during Film Shoot #2. 

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: It’s better to film about the victims of war. Only not about men. Better about women and children. It’s always good to talk about refugees. As long as they’re women. Women always evoke pity. Especially if they’re young and raped. The plot should be simple, concise, and consistent. God forbid it should contain any postmodernism or absurdism. Keep your focus firmly on the present.

And yet, Vorozhbyt’s play is rife with postmodernism and absurdism, where nothing is sacred, and everything deserves a healthy dose of skepticism.

Kudos to the final scene and the subtle breaking of the fourth wall, highlighted by Eric Trosch as Canadian Citizen, when it becomes clear that the Canadian Citizen’s story is less central because his tale is not a classic “war victim story” likely to evoke sympathy.

CANADIAN CITIZEN: You have no idea how much has happened to me! But no one is interested in my story because I am a man, and I’m liable to be drafted.

The Canadian–Ukrainian citizen (Trosch) is not a perfect victim, although he too is trying to survive the horrors of war and a landscape littered with ghosts. 

Like all good documentary theater, this is not a comfortable “sit back and relax” production, but rather, a play that leaves you feeling uneasy and rattled. 

The play will run until Sunday, September 27. Buy tickets for Fridays or Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., or Sundays at 4:00 p.m. 

Meanwhile, the Russia-Ukraine war blares on and the death toll rises. As Taras Semchyshyn, President of the Ukrainian Cultural Center of Los Angeles, reminded viewers before the play, the bloodshed continues, whether or not the media covers it.

The Ukrainian Culture Center of Los Angeles lists ways you can help and stand with Ukraine.

In Memoriam: Remembering visionary filmmaker Vlatko Gilić

A master filmmaker’s legacy lives on.

Last week the great master of cinema, Vlatko Gilić decamped to cinema Pantheon. He was 92. After 1980, with the exception of a short film Montenegro’s Atos in 1986, he was no longer making movies and was teaching full time at the film school in Novi Sad where he passed his passion for moving images and his unique vision of what cinema – and art in general – can be at its best to generations of his students.

Gilić (born in Montenegro, he lived and worked in Belgrade and Novi Sad in Serbia,) is universally recognized as one of the select few cinema luminaries such as Tarkovsky, Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa…as one of the 50 most significant directors in cinema history. And the only one from South East Europe to make that specific list. 

His groundbreaking short films have no dialog at all. They speak in a visual language so unique, so powerful and defining of human existence that they remain embedded in our consciousness and memory forever, making a profound impact on our notions of self in a complex and incredible universe. 

Gilić was both a cinema philosopher and cinema poet. He made a foundational film in 1971 about the human desire to extend life, One Day More. His slaughterhouse short In Continuo (1970) transcends the starkness of the environment in the same way that El Greco, or Picasso made their paintings speak beyond the silence of the brush. His lyrical Love (1972), with only a quiet and distant sound of the workmen wrenching steel beams on a construction site hit like the hurricane shattering layers of learned behavior to take us to the epicenter of our capacity to love. 

Men of Gilić’s vision and mastery rarely fare too well in any era. He was so ahead of his time that his approach and what he wanted to do stood apart from everyone and everything else. He made two feature films, Backbone (1975), and Days of Dreams (1980). To say that both were commercial failures is an understatement, though both premiered at Cannes. The claustrophobic world of Backbone which prophesied a polluted and suffocating world, an enigmatic and haunting doom, did not earn Gilić any favors. He stood alone, keeping to himself, and perhaps he had already said too much in the few films he had made. 

In 2012-2013, I teamed up with Adam Hyman of the Los Angeles Filmforum to organize the retrospective of Vlatko Gilić’s films. We were lucky that the Harvard Film Archive had bought the prints of his films and agreed to digitize them. Since then, the films of Vlatko Gilić have been touring the country, from the Pacific Film Archive to the National Gallery of Art, always inspiring new appreciations. These films are simply timeless, illuminating the human path with compassion and unparalleled understanding. 

In 2024, his lifelong friend, multimedia artist Saša Pančić published a book of Gilić’s drawings. It is an homage to his prolific visual artistry which can be traced back to his beginnings as production designer in the early 1960s. Browse these images as we pay our respects to a man of integrity whose cinematic opus is one of the great artistic legacies from South East Europe that we are proud of. 

Vera Mijojlic 

If you have memories of Vlatko Gilić films you’ve seen, please share them on our Facebook post. 

Review: Night is More Abstract by Miklavž Komelj

Translated by	Dan Rosenberg
Genre	Poetry
Language(s)	Slovenian, English
Format	208 Pages
Publisher	Zephyr Press
ISBN	9781938890383

Reviewed by Amanda L. Andrei

Mouse bones, owl pellets, and small silver pails appear amidst the dregs of communism, karma, and resurrections as Komelj’s poems play with size and scale from the minute to the epic. This fresh translation, Night is More Abstract: New and Selected Poems, imparts the abstractness of night not only on a mundane level, but also on a cosmic one (Zephyr Press, 2025).

Born in 1973, Komelj is a Slovenian art historian, writer, and poet with seventeen books of poetry; this new translation by poet Dan Rosenberg brings in selections from seven of those volumes as well as brand new poems. 

In “The Red Flag,” a lyrical whirlwind highlighting the crimson color, the poet is in conversation with filmmaker Pasolini’s Italian poem “Alla Bandiera Rossa” (“To the Red Flag”). Both poems scrutinize the red flag’s connotations with communism, class, and poverty. Komelj takes it further: “to get back to cherries, to get back to blood.” These earthy images are contrasted against Hitler, Christ, the narrator’s memories of a socialist society, and a confident sense of the mysteries of heaven and earth:

Did the gods, when they saw
the blood, find in their mouths
the taste of cherries?
(I know that feeling.)

It’s not just objects and ideologies that make their appearances. Along with dictators and religious figures, an international cadre of philosophers and artists march across the poems along with anonymous and transient folks—saints, sinners, and laypeople mingled alike. From an old man near a parking lot to the early theologian St. Augustine, from a tattooed woman on a bus to the Egyptian god Horus, Komelj conjures multiple historical and contemporary characters into his work, treating icons and strangers with equal reverence and ferocity. 

Take “The Lullaby of Isis,” originally from the 2021 collection The Burning Book, in which a narrator—the Egyptian goddess Isis of magic and motherhood—considers the “down of baby hair” as it becomes a quill while she touches the head of her child Horus, the god of Sun and Sky. The tone is maternal, royal, domineering, and religious, then shifts along with its stanza structures, transforming into a series of smaller poems under the guise of the lullaby. It breaks into more fragments, the quotidian rubbing up against terror:

In the middle of the road—
a bird—
no—a black plastic

bag—
no—
a slipper.

How 
they scream in the next
room!

The poem pulls in Latin and Italian; verses repeat as if chanted by a chorus. The words could be Isis still singing, or they could be the Sun God himself, finding his way across terra firma and repeating:

This is not a forest at night—
this is a night forest.
What you find within your might
is your greatest mystery.

Rosenberg provides a heartfelt translator’s note that emphasizes his conundrums, guiding questions, and principles as he encountered the Slovenian and multilingual poems. Pointing out conflicting translator goals and priorities, especially when teasing out assumptions of what Slovenian readers would know from Komelj’s personal poetic allusions and imagery, he muses, “Is my goal even to create an analogous experience, in English, to what Slovenian readers might encounter in his work? Is the stable notion of Slovenian readers even coherent?” 

The question is as philosophical as Komelj’s verses. Who receives these tides of mundane and cosmic images, and what do they do with them?

As systems, cultures, and attitudes shift in disproportionate and unpredictable ways across the world, these questions are worthwhile for any translator as they consider their audiences and for whom they translate. Ultimately, Rosenberg’s translations reflect his desires and actions to “simply honor what is most exciting” and to create a richly textured English translation. 

“I did my best not to smooth what he made rough,” he explains. In doing so, Komelj and Rosenberg present readers with a witching hour that screams, a darkness that glows.

Dispatch from the Craiova International Shakespeare Festival

Review By Amanda L. Andrei 

Come to Craiova at the start of the summer, and you’ll find this southwestern city in Romania bursting with drama. Since 1994, this cozy Belle Époque city in Romania has hosted the International Shakespeare Festival, filling the stages, streets, and sprawling Romanescu Park with performances and art inspired by the Bard. 

Held from May 21-31, 2026, this fifteenth edition of the festival revolved around the theme “Will Matters,” punning on the playwright’s name and concepts of agency and self-determination. How do you make your will matter in a world filled with tragedy? Or how does your will change once you turn the street corner and find a hidden treasure trove?

Indeed, tragedy graced the evening productions. Titus Andronicus: Reborn, presented by Japanese company Kakushinhan and directed by Kyunosuke Kimura, opened the festival, transforming the gory revenge play into a spiritual Noh performance replete with gorgeous masks and robes (design by Hisato Iwasaki and Maya, respectively). 

Romanian director Silviu Purcărete’s King Lear stripped the aging monarch (Claudiu Bleonț) from a decorated regality to gritty madness, only to subvert the titular character’s famous cry at the end (“Never, never, never, never, never!”) with muteness. In this Romanian interpretation of the political tragedy, the aching howl of the doomed king and his family pierced so deeply, it saturates the final atmosphere with silence.

If so many dead bodies and failed choices are too heavy to stomach, the streets and smaller performance venues offer an enchanting break and good humor. Turn the corner and you might run into a street parade with jewel-toned performers on stilts and makeup, or intimate art installations. 

A larger installation in Mihai Viteazu Square showcases youth creations inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream: over 1,000 middle and high school students from Dolj County developed a labyrinth of intricate, candy-colored scenes from the fantasy-comedy. A micro black-box theater with a filmed student performance inside adds a lovely private moment for passersby.

Choreographer Elena Zamfirescu directed 9+ Suitcases, One Tempest, an experimental movement and dance piece in the Museum of Art’s Constantin Brâncuși Centre. Young performers shifted and opened vintage suitcases, stacked glasses, and twisted their bodies in the natural light of the Centre. The images of the sculptor added historical depth to their abstract performances. (Brâncuși is from the region of Craiova and famously emphasized simplicity and essence in his artwork.) Estonian Tricktrek theatre staged a wordless puppet performance through an elaborate wooden castle on wheels in the Promenada Mall in Craiova, delighting audiences of all ages with its craftsmanship. 

Film lovers also enjoyed free screenings of classic Shakespeare films and adaptations: Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight, Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. Other films screened included Mamoru Hosada’s animated Scarlet, loosely based on Hamlet, and the short Romanian documentary Yuri Butusov and Other Tales about the famed Russian director and his avant-garde methods. The stylish Biergarten Craiova also showcased student short films in their “UNAT-Cinema” evening program, an initiative from the Universitatea Națională de Artă Teatrală și Cinematografică “I.L. Caragiale” in Bucharest. 

Constructed in 2024 for the thirtieth anniversary, the Shakespeare Village was a unique addition to the festival. Small wooden sets with Elizabethan era trades and activities (such as weaving, fencing, and leathermaking) encircled a grassy area for storytelling, dance tutorials, and fencing demonstrations. Gift stalls and food trucks lined the perimeter. A concert stage and shaded lounge area provided beanbags and low wooden tables to enjoy a beer or cocktail in between shows and events. At night, rock concerts and light shows filled the Village as audience members jammed, danced, and made merry. 

From stage to square, Craiova’s international festival shows that Shakespeare is more than a historical playwright, but a reason to gather and party.

It All Starts Here… Well, Kind Of

Notes from My Year as a Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellow

Review by Leon Ristov

This time last year, I found out I had made it to the final round of interviews for the Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship. The Fellowship is a yearlong program that supports ten emerging filmmakers between the ages of 18–25, offers mentorship and workshops from Sundance alumni, and ends with a showcase at the Sundance Film Festival. Per the official website, the fellowship focuses on “supporting emerging documentary and fiction filmmakers from across the globe.” At the time, it felt like everything I had been working toward was distilled into this opportunity. 

Flash forward to one year later—spring of 2026. I’m about to have my final check-in with Kat and Toby, the kind people who run the fellowship. I’ve spent a year as a Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellow, and I’m receiving eager messages from this year’s interviewees. They want advice on their applications. I remember being on the other side, hoping this opportunity would work out for me. The fellowship occupied so much space in my mind. Before I even knew the outcome, I had already imagined every version of it—being rejected, being accepted, sharing the news with others, or quietly holding onto disappointment. I played each scenario in my head so many times that by the time I received my acceptance letter, it felt strangely familiar, almost like I had already celebrated it. In retrospect, that might have been the perfect mindset to carry into this experience.

During the fellowship, our first kickoff lab took place at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. We were put up at the Porches Inn, a hotel made up of conjoined Victorian-style row houses painted in bright colors, complete with a sauna and pool that quickly became everyone’s favorite spot. I met the nine other fellows, and we clicked immediately, staying up late most nights, laughing and chatting in our swimsuits. The cohort hailed from all over—Canada, Costa Rica, India, Korea, Ireland, the U.S., and my country, North Macedonia. Over the course of a few very hot days, we shared our work and listened to Sundance Institute alumni speak, learning from filmmakers at various stages of their careers.

Gathered in the spacious, industrial rooms of MASS MoCA that somehow felt intimate, we listened to first-time directors who had achieved extraordinary success, and producers with longevity in the independent filmmaking world that one can only dream of. The humility in the room stood out to me the most. Mentors spoke about the effort and setbacks that come with making a first feature, as well as the even greater hurdles of making a second one.

“There was no illusion of a straight path or guaranteed success, just honest conversations about persistence, adaptability, and finding your way through uncertainty.”

It was then that I realized that the fellowship didn’t feel like all I had made it up to be in my head. It felt better than that—real people offering real advice.

In January 2026, I attended my first Sundance Film Festival thanks to the fellowship. I booked an Airbnb with most of the fellows, extending our stay beyond the four days scheduled for fellowship activities. “Guys… it all starts here,” Brittany would say jokingly, pausing for dramatic effect after “guys.” She was undoubtedly the funniest from our group—and probably in any group she’s part of. Still, there was some truth to the pomp. It was a historic edition—the final festival held in Park City, buzzing with excitement and nostalgia ahead of the festival’s move to Colorado in 2027. We had the chance to meet with studios and agents, attend a Janelle Monáe DJ set, and walk along the iconic (albeit freezing) Main Street, occasionally spotting recognizable faces from film and television.

But what stayed with me most weren’t those larger moments. It was the things that felt familiar. My friends Anooya Swamy and Raman Nimmala had their short films,Pankaja and O’Sey Balamma, premiering in the Official Selection. Marija Dimitrova, a seasoned Macedonian producer I was lucky to catch up with over a quick coffee, co-produced Shame and Money, the Grand Jury Prize-winning Kosovar film in the International Feature Program. My favorite film at the festival, Filipiñana—also a Grand Jury Prize-winner—was represented by MAGNIFY, the global sales arm of Magnolia Pictures, where I had previously interned. Attending these screenings became some of the most meaningful parts of the festival for me—moments of reconnecting and celebrating with people whose work I had followed closely, whose success didn’t feel foreign or overnight, but tangible and earned.

When my short film, Nikola, Nikola, screened during the Ignite showcase, projected on a large Sundance screen alongside the work of the other fellows, I found myself less focused on my achievement than on the collective strength of our films.

“There was something special about seeing all our films together—each one distinct, yet complementary to the others.”

I felt grateful for the cohort that Kat and Toby had brought together, a group of filmmakers who genuinely supported and believed in each other’s work. 

After the screening, aspiring filmmakers approached us with questions about applying to the fellowship, reminding me of how I had once imagined this moment from afar. But some of the most meaningful conversations happened among the fellows ourselves. In the minutes after the screening, we found ourselves complimenting each other’s films as if we were discovering them for the first time—sharing words of encouragement we had already said many times before.

“It” definitely did not all start here, despite our (at that point) running joke that it did. The fellowship was far from an overnight whirlwind of success. It was more of a coming together—a chance to be present with others on the same journey, and to find grounding in that shared experience. 

Things were already in motion. We just got to pause and witness it together.

Review: Documentary Film, Meant to Be

Reviewed by Guilherme Quireza

Warning: Contains spoilers for Meant to Be

Pogány Induló is only twenty, but he already looks worn down. In Hungary, he is famous, with a young audience that echoes his words back to him. It looks like the dream: fame, success, a launched career. Instead, success reached him before he knew what to do with it–and with it, the cost of success.

In Meant to Be, directed by Olivér Márk Tóth and produced by HBO, the young rapper moves through a life that has moved faster than he can process. Pogány Induló, born Marcell Szirmai, goes from a youthful hunger for recognition to a life organized around being seen. Since childhood, he has been in front of cameras, first as a YouTuber, chasing attention before he had any real protection from it. The privacy of a normal upbringing was gone early, and his life slowly took shape around visibility.

From the first scenes, the home around him is already coming apart. His parents argue often and the house becomes harder to live in. Slowly, the family learns how to live around something broken. Pogány tells the camera that he is fine after his parents announce their divorce, that it does not weigh on him. The camera closes in on his tired face, with no one else in the room. A detail shot shows his dirty, bruised feet while he lies curled up alone on the dressing-room couch, trying to rest. 

Then he is back onstage. In “Diktátor,” he sings about looking in the mirror and asking, “Who am I?” The line lands differently after the scene at home. It is no longer just a young rapper playing tough. Even if he says he is fine, his songs prove him to be a liar at best, and someone with a deeper struggle that is likely to erupt if ignored. The lyrics begin to carry the heavy feeling Induló refused to utter.

As he moves into rap, Induló starts adopting a harder public surface. The performance grows heavier. It gives him another role to maintain. The more he tries to look untouchable, the more exposed the songs become. The hardness is real, but so is the hurt leaking through it.

The family changes with the career. As his success grows, school falls away. He leaves high school before graduating, and the decision does not feel like freedom exactly. His mother shows concern, but the family is also becoming more dependent on his success. Her worry has to live beside the fact that his success helps the family survive. The child’s dream has turned into work, and the work has started supporting a circle larger than himself. Now, as a young man, he moves through one stressful concert after another: phones always nearby, no time to rest.

The songs become an outlet for his worst feelings. For a while, music holds him together. Those challenging emotions become part of the act, and the audience asks for them again and again. The adoration gives him purpose.

Induló’s body starts to give way almost as quickly as his fame grows. He is still changing, and not in a clean upward line. The child who dreamed of fame and the rapper now filling huge venues sit beside each other, along with his ADHD, panic, substance use, and the increasing scrutiny around him. They keep rubbing against each other.

As the shows grow bigger, drugs and alcohol stop looking like occasional interruptions in his life and more like part of the rhythm that keeps him going. After performances, the camera often finds him collapsed backstage, emptied after another night that has taken too much from him. The bigger the stage gets, the more wrecked he looks once he leaves it. The mornings after are worse, but in a quieter way. The noise of the show is gone, but the disorder remains: rooms left in chaos, the dull aftermath of a night that was supposed to prove everything was working. They are part of the same life as the music and the fame.

This way of living enters the songs. The heavy drinking, the refusal to slow down, all of it becomes part of the image Pogány sells and then has to live inside. Even as his physical and mental health begin to fail, the lifestyle becomes harder to escape. He grows sadder, more isolated. His relationship with his girlfriend falls apart. The persona keeps expanding while the person inside it shrinks.

And curiously, his self-destructive style pulls the audience closer. People can relate to the chaos, to the struggle. The more he sinks, the larger the stages become. The damage starts to look like proof of authenticity, and then like something marketable.

Around him, collapse often looks like style. The exhaustion is not hidden, nor are the drugs, the anger, or the need to look untouchable. They seep into the music and the way people present themselves. The young people around him recognize themselves in his damage, and that recognition feels contaminated by glamour.

Hungary’s drug laws make that image riskier. With drug possession and the promotion of drug use now criminalized, the lifestyle around Induló becomes easier to turn into evidence. Already strained by fame, he also risks becoming an example. His private damage gets pulled into public debate, and even performance carries legal and political risk. Curiously, when asked by the end of the film about the future, Induló seems content if it all ended right now. He acknowledges that his life is not healthy and should not be replicated, but is not open to leaving it all behind himself. 

At twenty, reinvention should be ordinary. For Induló, it looks forced and sped up by the presence of an audience. Today, his transformations are discussed and are attracting international public scrutiny, only to be folded back into the business around him almost as soon as they occur. Indeed, he is still forming. He is young. The world around him keeps asking for something finished: a star or a problem? Maybe even a symbol for Gen Z?

Calling him the voice of a generation risks taking too much from him. Still, the crowd gives the songs back to him as pressure. Pogány Induló gives shape to a restlessness that often appears as anger, and to a loneliness that often appears as numbness. The film exquisitely captures a young artist who is falling  apart in public, while the world around him keeps treating the image as exciting.

 

 

ROMANIAN TIFF AND CZECH KARLOVY VARY HEAT UP THE FESTIVAL SUMMER

It’s Film Festival Season in South East Europe!

The busy festival summer kicks off this weekend with the 24th annual Transilvania International Film Festival in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, followed in July by the 59th festival in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, and the 72nd Pula Film Festival in Croatia. 

Next in August are Locarno (the 78th edition) and Sarajevo (the 31st), the largest regional festival in South East Europe. 

And there’s more to explore on the festival circuit! Packed programs with an increasing number of sidebars, industry platforms and special cultural events offer festivalgoers plenty to choose from. 

Whether you’re a film industry insider or a tourist, European festival summer is welcoming to all guests. Enjoy! 

TIFF Romania – https://tiff.ro/en

Karlovy Vary – https://www.kviff.com/en/homepage

Pula – https://pulafilmfestival.hr/?lang=en

Locarno – https://www.locarnofestival.ch/home.html

Sarajevo – https://www.sff.ba/en 

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“Greek Apricots” at Future Frames in Karlovy Vary

Short film by Slovenian director Jan Krevatin, “Greek Apricots” – which L.A. audiences saw at SEEfest in May, is part of European Film Promotion’s program Future Frames at the upcoming Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, July 4 – 12.

The film portrays a couple brought together by their shared Macedonian roots on a quiet summer night, and features renowned N. Macedonian actress Labina Mitevska (“Before the rain,” “I am from Titov Veles”). Congrats to the young filmmaker!

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…and a few books to read on long summer nights…

Maya Ombasic, from Bosnia and Herzegovina and based in Quebec, Canada, whose breakout debut “Mostarghia” established her on the international literary scene, has several books in print albeit mostly in French.

“Lejla” (Dans les murs) features a woman traveling to Trieste, a city she’s fascinated by since childhood, and a city that encapsulates the unique milieu of Central/East and Southeast Europe.

And More:

Andrey Kurkov, Ukrainian author whose novel “The Silver Bone,” translated by Boris Dralyuk, was on the 2024 International Booker Prize longlist.

Georgi Gospodinov: The Bulgarian author, who won the 2023 International Booker Prize with “Time Shelter,” translated by Angela Rodel.

Jenny Erpenbeck, a German author from the former East Germany, won the 2024 International Booker Prize for “Kairos,” translated by Michael Hofmann. This novel is set in the final years of communist East Germany.

“This Way to Paradise – Dancing on the tables,” a book about life in Greece, by lifelong Philhellene (and a supporter of SEEfest since its early days,) Willard Manus. 

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Meet the Team at SEEfest’s 20-Year Milestone

by Cristina Sandu

Each spring, a unique cinematic voice echoes across Los Angeles, far from the glittering lights of Hollywood. That voice belongs to the South East European Film Festival, SEEfest, an annual celebration of storytelling that shines a spotlight on the cinematic culture of Southeast Europe. In its 20th year, SEEfest has become a beloved staple in the city’s cultural calendar, known for its diverse programming, global perspectives, and unwavering commitment to cross-cultural dialogue.

A Dream Realised

“The festival is Vera Mijojlić’s brainchild,” says Elisa Iovine, a long-time SEEfest team member and veteran of the global film industry.

Who Shows Up? Everyone.

A Milestone Year

2025 marks a major milestone: 20 years of SEEfest. And this anniversary brings not only reflection but also celebration.

“Two decades of Southeast European cinema in L.A., that’s no small feat,” says Elisa. “This year, we’re honoring the journey while still pushing forward.”

That push forward includes new programming and broader access.

SEEfest is showcasing six short film programs online, allowing audiences across the U.S. to participate in the festival from anywhere.

As Denise puts it, “Those who aren’t in L.A. or can’t get to a cinema can discover these films and stories anytime during the festival, anywhere in the U.S. It’s a great way to keep the conversation going and bring more people into the SEEfest community.”

Stories That Matter, Especially Now

In a time of cultural division and political polarisation, SEEfest’s mission feels more urgent than ever.

“Festivals like SEEfest are antidotes to isolationism,” Elisa says. “They remind us of our shared humanity through humour, history, and resilience, especially in places like the Balkans, where those stories are so richly layered.”

Denise adds, “I think SEEfest plays an important role right now because it allows us to slow down and connect through stories that don’t usually get much attention.”

SEEfest Review: Where Culture and Cinema Converge

Community at the Core

One theme emerges again and again in our conversation: community.

SEEfest thrives because of its people: the volunteers, the local partners, the audiences, and the filmmakers.

“SEEfest has always been community-driven,” Elisa says. “From the start, SEEfest has relied on the passion and dedication of volunteers, community leaders, and local businesses who believed in the importance of showcasing Southeast European cinema and culture.”

Changing Perceptions

Asked what she’d most like to change about how Americans view European cinema, Elisa doesn’t hesitate. “That it’s not for them. This opinion often stems from misconceptions that European cinema, particularly from Southeast Europe, is either too ‘art house,’ too serious, or somehow disconnected from American viewers’ experiences.”

Denise adds, “More people realize European film isn’t just French or Italian cinema. There’s so much happening in places like Bosnia, Romania, Ukraine, and Serbia, and SEEfest is helping open those doors.”

Looking Ahead: Bigger Platforms, Wider Impact

What’s next for SEEfest?

A dream collaboration with a major festival like Sundance or TIFF is high on the wishlist.

“Sundance would be a perfect fit,” Elisa says. “I believe the Sundance Film Festival would be an ideal partner for several strategic reasons. Sundance’s commitment to independent voices and emerging filmmakers aligns perfectly with SEEfest’s mission of discovering and elevating new talent from Southeast Europe.”

As Denise notes, the goal isn’t just recognition. “It’s about people coming together, watching something powerful, and then sticking around to talk about it. That shared experience helps build connections with fellow cinephiles and expands the festival’s reach into diverse neighbourhoods.”

Final Cut: SEEfest Is More Than a Festival

In the end, SEEfest is about so much more than films. It’s about community. It’s about cross-cultural curiosity. And most of all, it’s about the belief that stories told with heart, humour, and honesty can bring us closer in a world that often feels too far apart.

As SEEfest enters its third decade, its team continues to shine a light on the voices of Southeast Europe, one film at a time, while proving that when it comes to cinema.

About the Author

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