WOKE Festival, Paris, France (2025); Winterwerft Festival Frankfurt, Germany (2024); International Days of Peace, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina (2024); Sommerwerft Festival Frankfurt, Germany (2023); Explorez Festival 2022, Amsterdam, Nederlands (2022); MITIN festival, Seville, Spain (2022); "City connoisseurs: festival of cultural diversity", Belgrade, Serbia (2022); Connecting Centuries Festival, Belgrade, Serbia (2021);

We live in a time of massive amounts of global information through access to numerous media and digital platforms. It makes some facts and stories readily available and harder to conceal (such as violence, wars, witnessing crimes, etc.), but on the other hand, it does not seem to contribute to a general understanding of the Other and feelings and actions of solidarity and help.

Statistics and TV reports do not speak as loudly as we would like, even if they are alarming. Forced displacement has doubled in the last decade. With numbers estimated to exceed 120 million people in 2024, we are getting used to the suffering of refugees and migrants around the world.

But still, I started to imagine this play while watching a documentary, right at the moment when a Syrian immigrant desperately screamed: "You can't do this to us, you can't do this to us!". Standing in a crowd in front of an official of a European country who was reading a list of names to be transferred to another country, this man was on the verge of being separated from his family and friends.

The play EARTH focuses on the place in our mind and heart that can feel the pain of others and warns of the need to care equally for people and plants/nature. It is a wake-up call to the urgency to take care of our natural environment, our planet and our fellow citizens who are looking for a new land."

J. Anđelić, director

In it, plants and people play, both with similar fates: uprooted from their yard and forcibly transplanted into another world - not always friendly and inclined to help. In the documentary video that is part of the performance, people are not just numbers of refugees, they are faces, expressions, views from which thoughts and feelings can be read.

The whole performance is presented before us by the outstanding artist, violinist, singer, actress, performer Ljubica Damčević. Her role is a ball of short texts but also songs in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, our language, which she sings to us in her wonderful soft and dark voice.

Admiration for Jadranka Andjelic's delicate and investigative direction.

But something quite special was the audience. Contrary to expectations and popular opinion, there were about a hundred high school students in the czkd hall, from Belgrade but also from some other regions, whose languages ​​were mixed with laughter, and then with silence during the careful monitoring of the performance. They met the end shaken - at least those who participated in the conversation with the artists - faced with the feeling that life can be rough and uprooting painful.

Wonderful small and big things and people all around us...but little visible in this cruel time.

Ivana Stefanović, composer and writer

 It is always a challenge, as a selector, to find not only good performances, but also performances that are right for the venue. I believe I achieved both with "Zemlja", a superb performance, in the right context: as an open-minded festival about equality and social issues, with different forms of expression and foreign artists.

Knowing that you traveled across Europe to come perform made it extra special for us, the audience. I felt that the play addressed us directly, and from another place, from another, enriching angle.

Mathieu Touzé, Director of Théâtre 14 and WOKE Festival selector