Zero Nights: A Manifesto for the Future Festival

September 15th & 16th @ Ghetto Club, Split

@ Split Film Festival

Dunja’s Nights festival is born from a debt and a subversive desire to correct a historical injustice. Inspired by the legacy of Split native Dunja Ivanišević, author of the pioneering feminist film Žemsko (1968), this international festival is dedicated to video poetry, video art, and innovative audiovisual practices. Conceptually, it builds upon the avant-garde, experimental, and feminist spirit that Žemsko embodied, striving to become a safe space for gentle yet brave, interdisciplinary, and socially engaged artistic voices, with a special emphasis on female authors and feminist themes.

Ahead of its full edition, the festival will have its premiere introduction to the public through a unique event – Dunja’s Nights Under the Stars, on September 15th and 16th 2025 at the Ghetto club in the centre of Split. This inaugural event is realized in a strategic partnership with the city’s longest-running film festival – Split Film Festival – international festival of new film, thus creating a bridge between a new initiative and an established cultural institution from the very beginning.

The “Zero Nights” program, curated by Natasha Kadin, author and creator of this festival, and Marin Renić, director of the Split Film Festival, brings five carefully selected works of film and new media poetry. This selection represents a manifesto of the festival in miniature, celebrating the formal diversity and thematic boldness of what is being born before us in a Split night under the stars.
The creation of the festival is supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre and is co-produced by the Mavena association and the Split Film Festival.

Programme:

From Dusk to Dawn

(dir. ‘Spectra’ Artistic Collective, 2025, USA)

An immersive video installation that deconstructs Robert Rodriguez’s cult classic, exploring the subversion of genre and the nature of the cinematic gaze.

Pulse

(dir. May Kassem, 2025, Lebanon)

A fragmented diary of war and love, sliding back and forth in time and space, between life and death, exploring the quantum dimension, and dreams – narrated through impulsive and compulsive captures of images, sounds, news and improvised music, word, and play with the elements of life – in an attempt to find meaning in nature and hope in humanity – while facing war and destruction.

Marratein, Marratein

(dir. Julia Yezbick, 2025, USA)

An experimental short film about identity, heritage, and the connections between Detroit and Beirut, told through poetic letters to an ancestor.

Eight of Wands

(dir. Cesare Bedogné, 2024, Italy)

A cinematic journey inspired by T.S. Eliot’s poem and tarot cards, where the film is improvised day by day, and the shots become cards in a cinematographic deck.

Petticoat Fire

(dir. Mox Mäkelä, 2025, Finland)

A visually striking portrait of a woman who finds salvation in the solitude of the forest and re-examines her own past.

Dunja’s Nights Under the Stars: A Manifest of a Vision

When we were devising the program for the first edition of the “Dunja’s Nights” video poetry festival, we knew that this festival could not begin quietly. Its foundation is a scream – the creative but silenced voice of Dunja Ivanišević, whose film Žemsko waited decades to see the daylight and claim its deserved place in film history. Therefore, this first edition, its placement within the program of its ‘big brother’ – Split Film Festival, its setting in the very heart of the city of Split and its Palace, and the selection of audiovisual works themselves – this is not merely an introductory event for a new festival. It is our manifesto, a subversive and uncompromising attempt to correct an injustice and celebrate the spirit that Žemsko embodied.

In partnership with the Split Film Festival, an institution of new cinema, we present a program that is simultaneously global and intimate, poetic and political. The selection of five audiovisual works celebrates formal diversity and thematic boldness, charting the path the festival aims to follow in the future.
The ‘Spectra’ collective, in From Dusk to Dawn, deconstructs a cult film narrative, questioning the nature of the gaze – just as Dunja questioned prescribed social roles. Pulse by Myriam El Hajj captures the resilience of Beirut, a city that, like creative energy itself, survives against all odds. Julia Yezbick’s Marratein, Marratein explores the threads of identity and heritage through poetic letters to an ancestor, which is the very essence of the video poetry we wish to nurture. The improvised film-tarot of Cesare Bedogné in Eight of Wands reminds us that art is always a journey into the unknown, while Petticoat Fire by director Mox Mäkelä celebrates female autonomy and the strength found in solitude, offering a visually powerful response to patriarchal narratives.

This selection is our vow to Dunja Ivanišević and to all the artists whose voices have been silenced. It is a promise that “Dunja’s Nights” will always be a safe space for experimentation, feminist themes, social activism, and for the beauty that is born on the margins.

Join us under the stars. Blow some wind to the sails of this gentle yet sharp, fragile yet direct idea of a video poetry festival in Split.

Natasha Kadin, Author of Dunja’s Nights Festival
Marin Renić, Director of the Split Film Festival