July 30, 2025 | Wednesday
Each summer, something magical unfolds in the city of Peja/Peč. With the support of the European Union, the ANIBAR organisation, behind Kosovo’s only international animation festival, brings the city to life through animated expression, civic reflection, and artistic experiment.
Now in its 16th edition, ANIBAR has become more than just a festival. It is a platform for dialogue, resistance, and joy – a space where local and international creatives gather to reimagine the world through moving images and community engagement.
For 16 years, Anibar has used animation as a powerful tool to address social issues, build connections across borders, and spark meaningful conversations. From Peja/Peč to the world, the festival continues to amplify powerful social messages through the universal language of art.
Kosovo’s only international animation festival takes place every year under a different theme. Organised under the theme “WTF” (What’s the Future), this year’s edition, held from 14 to 20 July, gathered artists in Peja/Peč to question the future. With animated films depicting topics from climate collapse to identity politics, Anibar 2025 invited its audience to not only reflect the world around them but also to question it and dare to imagine it in a better light. WTF?!” is not a conceptual theme; it’s a sincere and emotional reaction to what’s happening around us. The general state of the world, uncertainty, tensions, polarisation, wars, have deeply influenced the way we experience reality,” said the festival’s director, Ms. Arba Hatashi, unfolding this year’s theme, “This edition marks a shift towards spontaneity and experimentation. We’re building connections with communities. We’re sharing not just the art, but the way art can connect with people in deep and true ways. Animation has the power to create new realities without obeying traditional logic. It is a voice for the unheard, a shape for feelings, a weapon for ideas.”
With animation at the centre of it, not as entertainment but as a tool of expression that transcends borders, beyond films, ANIBAR this year focused their energies on education, a component which the EU proudly supported through two different projects implemented by ANIBAR.
Three workshops led by three renowned facilitators from Kosovo and Serbia – activities of the EU-funded project “Fostering Sustainable Partnerships and Dialogue: Arts and Culture Collaboration between Kosovo and Serbia” implemented by ANIBAR – provided an opportunity for the young participants to learn cave theatre techniques as well as illustration and storytelling ones.
On the other hand, the Eco-Nest, implemented as part of the EU-funded project Green Horizons, showed both the EU and Anibar’s joint effort to integrate environmental awareness into public cultural spaces.
Writing Workshop with Uresa Ahmeti
“Firstly, I feel genuinely grateful to be working with such a diverse group. From age and ethnic background to sexuality and gender, this small, tight-knit circle brings together people with different lived experiences and perspectives. It’s exactly this richness that’s deepening the process. Throughout the sessions, we’ve been engaging with personal themes and their connection to larger social, political, and cultural systems and curiosities. This is also an extension of and enriched by the ANIBAR Festival Program, and this year’s theme, WTF.
Topics range from toxic masculinity to queerness and queer joy to gender-based violence, ethnic identity conflicts from diaspora perspectives, to identity-based hate crimes, to love,” says Uresa Ahmeti, the activist, writer and performance artist from Kosovo, who led the writing workshop within this year’s edition of ANIBAR.
Thanks to this workshop, in the span of seven days, participants had the opportunity to develop texts addressing justice, identity and resistance as well as engage in group work and guided reflections through which they learned to use writing to influence public discourse. As for some of them it was the first time attending a writing writing workshop, they expressed their gratitude to the EU for the opportunity to put pen to paper in a safe and inclusive space.
Illustration Workshop with Marko Dješka
Croatian comic artist and animation director Marko Dješka returned to Anibar with the second edition of the DIY fanzine workshop. This time, more energised, more collaborative, and more ambitious.
“This year’s DIY ANIBAR comic fanzine workshop #2 is even more productive than last year’s, which was excellent in itself! With this range of young talents who have shown great interest in learning a new medium and using software for editing and preparing the zine for print, there is no doubt that the ANIBAR DIY zine #2 and subsequently the new ANIBAR festival magazine, will be a great addition to the results of yet another most attractive animation festival in the world, ANIBAR in Kosovo,” said Dješka when we asked him about the work they are doing in the workshop.
The writings that will come out of the workshop with Uresa Ahmeti and the illustrations from the workshop with Marko Dješka will be part of ANIBAR’s Fanzine.
Cave Theatre Workshop with Ana Pinter
Inspired by prehistoric cave art and shadow performance, the workshop with Ana Pinter, Serbian stage director, invited children and youth to create a theatrical piece using only chalk, light, movement, and myth.
“This is not my first time at the Anibar festival. In the last couple of years, I used to come as an audience member and in the meantime, I have become a huge fan of the program and established deep connections and friendships with the amazing and generous ANIBAR organisers, coordinators and volunteers. This year is special because I am also part of the program as a workshop leader. I wanted to introduce the concept of cave theatre to the youngest of the local community, as I see it as a primordial, analogue version of the art of animation. To make this kind of art form, one just needs to be curious and playful and needs to have a black wall, chalk, a lamp, imagination and a group of friends. More or less, for me, this is what ANIBAR stands for,” said Ana Pinter about her experience at this year’s edition of the festival as a workshop facilitator.
In the Cave Theatre workshop, participants developed, designed and performed a cave theatre piece based on an Albanian folk legend. The creative process focused on visual and musical art, light and shadow play. In a collective, fun, creative and zero-waste experience, the participants evoked archetypal sensations and a ritualistic atmosphere.
The Eco-Nest: Where Art Meets Green Transition
As part of Anibar’s broader effort to integrate environmental awareness into public cultural spaces, the Eco-Nest this year was designed as an open, accessible, and creative setting where community members, artists, and festival visitors had the chance to directly engage with themes of sustainability, circular economy, recycling and green living through artists and participatory installations.
The goal of Eco-Nest was to present environmental topics in a highly visual and interactive format that aimed to encourage learning through experience. Rather than offering information in conventional formats such as lectures and presentations, the Eco-Nest used art, games, and hands-on activities to connect visitors of all ages to ideas around reusing and recycling as well as sustainable practices in a playful, accessible and community-driven method.
The Eco-Nest area was fully open to the public, and the design of the installations ensured that activities were accessible to people of different ages, abilities, and backgrounds.