Puppet festival – a Bridge that connects the World

The final preparations for the Fourth International Festival of Puppet Art (FLUM 2024) are currently underway at the Puppet Theater in Mostar.

In 2021, just one year before the Puppet Theater in Mostar will turn seventieth, Theater Director Edin Kmetaš had the need and desire to open the doors of one of the most recognizable theaters in the Region to puppeteers from all over the world. Even then, he knew how necessary and how important it would be for children in Mostar to learn to accept the peculiarities of different cultures and traditions through puppet shows.

With great desire and enthusiasm, the employees of the Theater took the first steps to make Mostar a bridge where puppet artists from the East and the West, from different continents, meet, bringing to the city a new theatrical poetics and a variety of cultural content.

Today, to the surprise of even those who created it, the festival has far exceeded its initial ambitions, and many world-renowned artists have it in their calendars as an unavoidable theatrical event.

Puppet Festival

This year’s Fourth FLUM will be officially opened on Saturday, September 21 at 8 p.m., on the International Day of Peace, and will last until Wednesday, September 25, when, also at 8 p.m., there will be a ceremonial closing of the Festival with an award ceremony for the best puppetry achievements in several categories. Then the best performance will be announced, which will deserve the GRAND PRIX of the Festival, the traditional award, the “Golden Firefly” sculpture. Decisions on the best plays will be made by an international expert jury.

For FLUM’s competition program, selector Nedžad Maksumić, artistic director of the Puppet Theater in Mostar, chose 13 plays from nine countries. From Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia, to Estonia, Hungary and Spain, from Romania to Slovenia, all the way to the distant Republic of Korea. Some of the plays have already had their performances at prestigious world festivals and are focused on contemporary models of puppetry. The audience in Mostar will have the opportunity to enjoy different forms of puppet shows, from intimate ones to “spectacle” shows. For the first time, the Festival will host a puppet opera. In addition to the fact that plays carry a clear message of strengthening children’s identity and ethical values, they also provide children with hidden models of consciousness formation for good and beauty.

Union Internationale de la Marionnette

Proof that the Festival is growing qualitatively from year to year and that it is becoming very interesting for the professional public as well, is the fact that this year FLUM will gather a large number of representatives of the world association of puppeteers, UNIMA. This year, UNIMA International continues its cooperation with the Festival in the sense that members of the association, masters of the world puppetry scene, will implement numerous lectures, panel discussions and presentations of contemporary trends in puppetry in the accompanying program of the festival. The festival will host an exhibition of photographs by world-renowned photographer Richard Termino, the works of our world-famous puppeteer, Ines Pašić from Mostar, as well as other works in collaboration with The Eugene O’Neill Theater from the USA.

Also, in the accompanying part of the program, numerous workshops have been prepared for children of elementary school age, which will be led by prominent artists and pedagogues in the field of puppetry from Croatia and the Republic of Korea.

A special program at the festival is the video projection “Let There Be Light“, which is organized together with the Puppet Theater in Mostar by the UNIMA Puppetry Collaboratorium, a project that was created in Mostar last year. The project symbolizes the hope for a better understanding of all nations in the world and the desire that the spotlights of all theaters shine on Mostar that day. The festival also received the patronage of the UNESCO NGO Liaison Committee through the president, Mr. Nick Newland, who together with Mrs. Karen Smith, president of UNIMA International (Australia) and Mr. Dimitij Jageneau, Secretary General of UNIMA International (Belgium), to attend the opening of this year’s FLUM festival.

Cultural heritage

During the Festival, a panel discussion will be organized on the subject of Shadow Theater – Karađoz, one of the most important puppetry techniques that has its roots in the Republic of Turkey. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Mostar carry a rich heritage of this puppetry technique, which is confirmed by the collection of Hasib Ramić in the National Museum in Sarajevo, as the last traditional puppeteer in the technique protected under the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage, recognized throughout the world. On this occasion, guests arrive at FLUM from Egypt, Lebanon, Argentina, Canada, Italy, the Czech Republic, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, Singapore, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

More than two hundred guests and participants of the Festival will have the opportunity to share their knowledge and experiences about contemporary trends in puppetry and to place their hosts, the Puppet Theater in Mostar, as an unavoidable and bright spot on the map of world puppetry.

The performances will be played on the stages of the Mostar Puppet Theatre, the National Theater in Mostar and the Croatian Center “Herceg Stjepan Kosača”.

FLUM not only connects rich traditions and preserves cultural heritage, but also opens the door to innovations in contemporary puppetry, creating a bridge between history and modernity.

Entrance to all performances and programs of the Festival is free, and it provides an opportunity for all citizens to enjoy this unique and diverse artistic experience.