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European Film Festival Palić Unveils the Complete Program for Its 33rd Edition

14.07.2026.

The 33rd European Film Festival Palić will take place from July 18 to 22, 2026, in Palić and Subotica. Around 100 films will be screened in 15 program sections.

In the Official Selection selected by Nikolai Nikitin, the audience will be able to see nine European films. In the film “Oh, This Unspeakable Void“ by director Simon Verhoeven (Germany), the protagonist, Joachim, navigates the bizarre challenges of acting school and the eccentric rituals of his hosts, all while trying to find his place in the world. "Echoes of Saint George" by Jelena Bajić Jočić (Serbia) is inspired by true events and follows the life of Stanoje, a proud farmer rooted to his ancestral home on Mount Radan. "The Good Daughter" by Júlia de Paz Solvas (Spain) tells the story of three generations of women facing reality and making decisions about their futures, while "Elena’s Shift" by Stefanos Tsivopoulos (Greece) follows the life of Elena, a Romanian migrant and single mother dreaming of building a stable life for herself and her young son; in Gábor Holtai’s “Feels Like Home” (Hungary), Rita, an ordinary but lonely woman, becomes the victim of an unusual kidnapping. The film “China Sea”, directed by Jurgis Matulevičius (Lithuania), follows martial arts champion Osvald, who accidentally injures a girl on the street and is subsequently expelled from the sports federation; while “Mo Papa” by Eeva Mägi (Estonia) centers on Eugen, a former prisoner who served ten years for causing his younger brother's death in a tragic incident. "The Miserable Mother" by Susanne Heinrich (Germany) follows a protagonist who finds motherhood – with her partner Peter Pan and newborn baby – to be a prison, while "Nino in Paradise" by Laurent Micheli (Belgium) centers on Nino Paradis, who, together with his girlfriend and friends, attempts to find a place in a world that seems to have given up on them.

The Parallels and Encounters competition program will feature eight films curated by Julia Sinkevych. “Chica Checa” by Šimon Holý (Czech Republic) follows the relationship between Zdena, a widow from a small Czech village, and her son Lukas, who keeps his queer life in Paris a secret. “To the Victory!” by Valentyn Vasyanovych (Ukraine) is set in a fictional near- future where the war has ended, leaving a film director out of work and out of luck. Mihai Mincan’s (Romania) film “Milk Teeth” is set in Romania in 1989, during the final days of Ceaușescu’s dictatorship, where ten-year-old Maria becomes the sole witness to her sister’s mysterious disappearance. Olmo Omerzu’s (Czech Republic) “Ungrateful Beings” follows a bilingual family on a challenging holiday on the Adriatic coast; “Black Money for White Nights”, directed by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov (Bulgaria), follows a married couple who lose their savings after being scammed by a travel agency following the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The film “Tell Me What You Feel” by Łukasz Ronduda (Poland) offers a compelling perspective on modern love, vulnerable masculinity, and lives shaped by intimacy and loss; “Solomamma” by Janicke Askevold (Norway) follows a curious journalist who decides to embark on single motherhood by sperm donor; while “Ulya” by Viesturs Kairišs (Latvia) follows a teenage girl nearing two meters tall, who grows up on a remote rural farm in 1964 and begins a basketball career.

The New European Documentaries section features five films: "How to Talk to Lidia?" by Georgian director Rusudan Gaprindashvili, "Plastic Gods and the Mirror" (Branko Lazić, BiH), "Collapse" (Anat Even, France), "Silent Flood" (Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, Ukraine), and "Traces" (Alisa Kovalenko, Ukraine).

The Eco Dox section, dedicated to the best European environmental documentaries, comprises nine feature-length and short films: “Contingentia” (Vasilije Bujaković, Serbia), “Red Wind” (Ljubica Blagojević, Serbia), “Jason’s Box” (Michael Strassburger, Germany), “We Have to Survive” (Tomáš Krupa, Slovakia), “Resilience” (Tomáš Elšík, Czech Republic), “Filos” (Orhan Tekeoğlu, Turkey), “What the Hell Is Water” (Anja Bilanović, Serbia), “In Cod We Trust” (Guro Saniola Bjerk, Norway), and “Animal Species” by Tara Radusinović (Serbia). The programmer for these two sections is Igor Toholj.

This year, the New Hungarian Film program will present five contemporary Hungarian films: “Anhelation” by Zoltán Vámos, “Fool's Tale – Steppe Ballad” by Zoltán Bicskei, “The Origin of the World” by Borbála Nagy, “Romzsa Tódor” by Attila Bokor, and “Mommy Blue” by Bernadette Mayer; meanwhile, the Germany in Focus program will screen “Women As Lovers” by director Koxi, “Home Entertainment” by Dietrich Brüggemann, and “The Land Within” by Michael Kofler, along with around twenty short films, in cooperation with German Films, the national agency for the promotion of German cinema abroad.

Special selections will be dedicated to this year’s recipients of the Aleksandar Lifka Award, featuring screenings of “Heroes of Halyard,” directed by Radoš Bajić, and “The Beasts,” in which he plays the leading role, as well as Kornél Mundruczó’s films “Delta”, “Pleasant Days”, and “Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project.”

The European Film Festival will also feature four special screenings: “Duplicate” (Marko Glušič, Serbia), “Restart” (Duman Erkimbek, Kazakhstan), “Tomorrow Morning” (Jani Bojadzi, North Macedonia), and “All About the King Named Petar” (Anita Panić, Serbia). In addition, the festival will present "Wind, Talk to Me" by Stefan Đorđević (Serbia), winner of the MIOB New Vision Award.

More than 40 films will be screened in the Underground Spirit, EFA Shorts, Young Spirit of Europe, Her Lens, and Zsigmond Vilmos program sections. The European Film Festival Palić will also feature two guest festival selections, showcasing the Gornji Milanovac Film Festival and the Skopje Film Festival.

The European Film Festival Palić is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, the Provincial Secretariat for Culture, Public Information and Relations with Religious Communities, the City of Subotica, the European Union through the Creative Europe MEDIA program, as well as numerous partners and media sponsors.

For more than two decades, Gorky List has been a valued partner of the European Film Festival Palić, serving both as an integral part of its visual identity and as the sponsor of the Gorky List Audience Award, which encourages audiences to engage more deeply with the films presented at the festival.

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