A Documentary Film
At the turn of the millennium, students in Novi Sad used a music festival to challenge a regime and inspired a generation. Twenty-five years later, students are back on the streets.
What happened to the hope?
About the Film
EXIT Festival was born in 1999 as a student movement against a regime. It became part of a wider wave of resistance that helped shape the atmosphere for political change.
Within a decade, EXIT had grown into one of Europe's leading music festivals, drawing artists and audiences from across the world.
In November 2024, the collapse of a newly renovated train station canopy in Novi Sad reignited student anger and brought a new generation back onto the streets.
This film is not a celebration of EXIT. It uses EXIT as a lens to understand what a generation fought for, what they built, and what may have been left unfinished.
Why Now
More than two decades after EXIT asked its question, Serbia is asking it again.
Creator's Note
In the summer of 2002, I left the UK for Serbia to promote a rave, arriving in Belgrade with a suitcase full of vinyl, rare in the city at the time, sold out of a small café to help fund the trip, and no real sense of what to expect.
Serbia was not a place people around me understood, and it was not somewhere they expected me to go. What I found there would shape my perspective on culture, politics, and the power of collective action for decades to come.
I kept coming back. Over the years, I have built friendships, witnessed the country's evolution first-hand, and watched its social and political landscape shift in real time.
This is not the perspective of a foreign correspondent parachuting in. It comes from someone who stayed.
This film is not a retrospective. It is a reckoning. The question EXIT asked in 1999 is the same question Serbia is asking again today.
A quarter of a century has been spent trying to understand the answer. This is an attempt to put it on record.
The Film
A 60-minute documentary for broadcast, with a 90-minute festival cut, filmed in Belgrade and Novi Sad with additional material captured outside Serbia.
Get In Touch
Serbia: Are You Ready for the Future? is currently in development. We are seeking a UK or European co-production partner and broadcaster for the 60-minute cut.
If you are a broadcaster, producer, festival programmer, or press, get in touch.