Battle of the Neretva / 20 Years of Operation:City

SHADOW CASTERS present the grand return of the acclaimed performance “BATTLE OF THE NERETVA”
Tuesday, October 21, 2025, at 8 PM
Pogon Jedinstvo, Zagreb

Get ready for an intense journey through the layered depths of personal and collective history as performers Boris Bakal and Leo Vukelić guide you through a radical theatrical experience.

This revival of Battle of the Neretva marks the 20th anniversary of the first Operation:City, celebrated with a rich four-day cultural-artistic and discussion program from October 18 to 21.

PROGRAM

Saturday, October 18
11:00 AM — Ban Jelačić Square
Performance: Siniša Labrović – “Flags of All Countries, Unite!”

Monday, October 20
5:30 PM — Main Hall, Pogon Jedinstvo
Panel Discussion: 20 Years Since Operation:City — Where Are Zagreb’s Cultural Spaces Today?
Moderator: Vatroslav Miloš
Participants: Boris Bakal (Shadow Casters), Sanja Burlović (AKC Attack), Tomislav Medak, Janja Sesar (Pogon)

7:45 PM — Main Hall, Pogon Jedinstvo
Performance: Marija Bajo – “In Memoriam Actualis”

Tuesday, October 21
6:00 PM — Small Hall, Pogon Jedinstvo
Panel Discussion: The Return of the Cancelled
Moderator: Matija Mrakovčić
Participants: Damir Bartol Indoš (artist), Ana Kutleša (BLOK), Siniša Labrović (artist)

8:00 PM — Main Hall, Pogon Jedinstvo
Performance: Battle of the Neretva, produced by Shadow Casters

All events are free of charge. No registration or tickets required.

About Shadow Casters & the Performance

Over the past nine years, Shadow Casters, a transdisciplinary artistic and production platform, have realized numerous projects exploring the boundaries of performance, documentary form, social engagement, and dialogue with the community. Their repertoire includes plays, workshops for all ages, film screenings, installations, exhibitions, public space interventions, and innovative educational formats.

Through these, they have consistently opened space for confronting personal and collective traumas, identity, responsibility, and the future.

In this context, Battle of the Neretva stands as a representative example of their work—a performance unafraid of emotional exposure, radical staging, or intellectual complexity.

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

A metadramatic anti-spectacle that transcends history, Battle of the Neretva is an abrupt, inconsistent scenic dialogue between two individuals searching for themselves. It reflects on happiness, emancipation, freedom, safety, responsibility, and the future in a time of the ongoing collapse of meaning and dialogue.

It is simultaneously a fictional and real contemplation of the contemporary green valley, staged in a performative space that dares to question everything. The show unveils both the public and private dilemmas of its performers and their social, moral, and professional environments.

It’s a lecture-performance that raises solvable and unsolvable questions of politics, humanity, and nature—belonging and not belonging to the past, present, and possible futures.

A narrative of real and imagined characters, with victories and defeats told non-linearly across historical time, Battle of the Neretva merges documentary experience with dramatized storytelling. It references not only actual battles and personal family histories but also the making of the film Battle of the Neretva itself.

CREDITS

• Premiere: January 30, 2016

• Concept & Direction: Boris Bakal

• Dramaturgy: Anja Pletikosa

• Set Design & Co-author: Leo Vukelić

• Performers: Boris Bakal, Leo Vukelić

• Music & Sound Images: Tomislav Babić

• Sound Performer: Oleg Colnago

• Costume Design: Ivana Bakal

• Video Design: [Vedran Senjanović]

• Video & Lighting Design: Domagoj Klasić / Saša Bogojević

• Poster Design: Ivan Klisurić

• Production: Shadow Casters

• Executive Producers: Shadow Casters

FROM THE CRITICS

“Battle of the Neretva, a performance by Zagreb’s Shadow Casters, is a chain of personal, political, cultural, and social aspects, conflicts, battles, dilemmas, riddles, and retrospections. It refuses to be shaped into any definite clarity, because it chooses to remain contradictory. Likely one of the best stage performances about Yugoslav history, assembled in a genre of alternating confrontation and reflection—conditions for healing wounds.”
— Rok Vevar, Sigledal, Ljubljana, 2017

“Performed at the Karver Bookstore, the show by Zagreb’s Shadow Casters, well known to Bitef audiences, is a complex stage work blending lecture-performance elements with dense dramaturgy. Based on a discussion of production details from the film ‘Battle of the Neretva’, the performers disassemble and reassemble private and public history.”
— Ana Tasić, Politika, September 12, 2016

“In the finale, they squeeze lemon juice into their eyes and chew raw onions, discussing authenticity versus fiction. Horrifying to watch, these acts raise the question: are we blind to truth? The performance masterfully blurs the line between biography and fiction, demanding the viewer to question memory itself.”
— Olga Vujović, Kritikaz, March 1, 2016

“This ‘search for Archimedes’ point in the universe’ reflects the Shadow Casters’ obsession with reconnecting the fractured threads of our lives and finding peace with the ghosts of the past. The two performers, possibly descendants of men who fought on different sides, argue, cry, wear partisan, Chetnik, and Ustasha hats, and physically clash—but they keep talking. The performance resembles the brilliant book ‘The Oak Trees That Fall’, imagining a dialogue across ideological divides.”
— Bojan Munjin, Portal Novosti, March 13, 2016