KotorArt International Festival has ended: Montenegro on the European map of great artistic names

The program “Jazz Square” on August 11th was the last in number of performances in the series of jazz concerts and so was completed the entire program of KotorArt international festival. There were more than 1500 artists from 25 countries who performed in more than 300 programs – 53 main and over 250 accompanying programs during 46 festival days of this year's edition of the festival. ​

The Festival is being held under the patronage of the Kotor Municipality and Ministry of Culture of Montenegro as well as with support of many important friends and sponsors – Coca-Cola, Lustica Bay, Porto Montenegro, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary and Embassy of Hungary in Montenegro, Kotor Tourist Organization, Huma, Yunus Emre Institute, Accion cultural Espanola and many other partners. The Festival secures over 40% of its entire budget through various sponsorships, donations and its own funds. Festival’s media partners are RTCG and Pobjeda and media friends are all more significant media friends in Montenegro. 

KotorArt would like to thank its sponsors, artists, audience, friends as well as media partners for extraordinary cooperation and participation in all program activities. 

This year’s participants on KotorArt came from Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary, USA, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Luxembourg, Armenia, Turkey, Israel, China and Russia. 
 
This year’s edition of KotorArt was held from June 27th and August 11th on many ambience locations in Kotor and around Boka Bay through four program segments: XVIII KotorArt Festival of Klapa Perast, XXVII KotorArt Kotor Festival of Theatre for Children, XVIII KotorArt Don Branko’s Music Days and IX KotorArt Philosophers’ Square. 

XVIII KotorArt Festival of Klapa Perast has hosted female, male and mixed klapa from Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina which were competing in different categories. The members of the jury included Mojmir Čačija (president of the jury), Zlata Marjanović, Mario Katavić, Zorana Larković, Marina Dulović, Jasminko Šetka and Vladimir Begović. In the category for the best female klapa the jury chose Klapa Luše from Split. Klapa Conra, also from Split, won in the category for the best male klapa. The award for the best New Klapa Song went to the author Marko Šimić for the song “Love of Luša” performed by Klapa Luše from Split. Also, as a part of the event “Hungarian Weeks”, a concert was held by the a capella group Full Moon from Hungary. 

XXVII KotorArt Kotor Festival of Theatre for Children was held this year under the slogan “A Trip to the Moon”. Kotor was the city of children from July 1st to July 12th and our youngest visitors had the opportunity to see plays from many countries of the world and also participate in various workshops and panels. This year’s 27th Kotor Festival of Theatre for Children was marked by 24 plays as a part of the theatre program. During 12 festival days 16 plays were performed of which 12 were premieres and four additional plays. There were total of 109 programs at the Festival.  

IX KotorArt Philosophers’ Square was held on 10th and 11th August with the topic “How to Think Exile”. The editor of this year’s Square was Paula Petričević, philosopher, activist, feminist, master of political science. Čarna Brković and Adriana Zaharijević held lectures entitled “Humanitarianism as the Politics of Citizenship” and “We Refugees: An Unlivable Life”. 

XVIII KotorArt Don Branko’s Music Days have through commissions and performances of new work artistically marked 40 years of the devastating earthquake in 1979 as well as the enlisting of Kotor on UNESCO world heritage list. Concerts were divided into several segments: world class artistic music with performances by world’s leading artists like Yuja Wang, Andreas Ottensamer, Narek Hakhnazaryan, Blythe Teh-Engström, Roman Simović and many others; then Coca-Cola Stage where artistic and popular music intertwined. There was a concert dedicated to Oliver Dragojević but also concerts by Massimo Savić and Sergej Ćetković with the Young Talents Orchestra. Jazz Square was a serial of five weekly jazz concerts on the Museum Square in Kotor. KotorArt Talents, a platform for young, successful artists supported strongly by the Festival, as well as the Ports of Art which is maybe the favorite segment of Kotor’s local hosts, passersby and tourists with performances by various ensembles around Old Town Squares. Apart from the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, we listened to two concerts by the Festival Orchestra, RTS Big Jazz Orchestra, No Borders Orchestra and many other ensembles. KotorArt was a significant partner in organization of Hungarian Weeks in Montenegro and it has hosted many directors of big festivals from Verbier and Shanghai. 

According to the first estimations, the main and accompanying festival programs were visited by more than forty thousand visitors.