"Sterijino Pozorje" is an annual festival of Serbian national drama and theater held in Novi Sad. Alongside its competitive section, it also features an international selection program called "Krugovi." At the 69th edition of the festival, taking place in Novi Sad from May 26th, "Red Water" will be presented.
"Red Water," the acclaimed novel by Jurica Pavičić, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Silvi, who disappeared one September Saturday in 1989. Police searches yield no results, while political upheavals, the fall of a system, societal changes, and war overshadow the girl's disappearance, fading it into obscurity. Silvi's father, mother, and twin brother are the only ones still searching for her. "Red Water" spans 27 years, tracing the lives of people intertwined with Silvi's disappearance, from family members to suspects to inspectors of the communist militia. Through their stories, the novel encompasses three decades of life in Croatia.
The cast includes: Nives Ivanković, Nikola Ivošević, Stipe Radoja, Ana Marija Veselčić, Goran Marković, Donat Zeko, Arijana Čulina, Nenad Srdelić, Stipe Jelaska, Mijo Jurišić, Marjan Nejašmić Banić, Andrea Mladinić, Katarina Romac, Luka Čerjan, and Zdravko Vukelić.
Competing for a spot at the festival were around seventy productions from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Hungary, and Serbia. The festival curator, Dr. Ana Tasić, emphasized that the primary criterion for selecting the performances was their artistic quality, including the value of dramatic texts, direction, acting, music, set design, and costumes. All other factors, such as the geographical origin of the work, general thematic guidelines of the program, and production conditions, were secondary to this consideration. In addition to "Red Water" from the HNK Split, other performances in the "Traces" category include "Moji tužni monstrumi" by Mate Matišić from the GDK Gavella in Zagreb, and Selma Spahić's authorial project "Ljubičasto" from the Kamerni teatar 55 in Sarajevo.