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Osnaživanje, stil i inspiracija spajaju se u svakom izdanju našeg magazina.
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December 17, 2025
ne:BITEF opened on Monday, December 16, with the performance The Pelicot Trial by Milo Rau and Servane Dècle, staged under specific conditions at the Mata Milošević Stage of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. ne:BITEF represents an activist and artistic response to the cancellation of the official BITEF festival this year—an unprecedented event in the festival’s six-decade history.
The opening production was a play created as a co-production of the Vienna Festival and the Avignon Festival, performed by 30 local actors, as well as activists who are actively engaged in the daily struggle for a better society in Serbia. The performance was simultaneously streamed live on the YouTube channel FDU in Blockade, with organized group screenings held both at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and in numerous cities across the region.
The cast included Svetlana Bojković, Vesna Trivalić, Marija Opsenica, Tihomir Brajović, Milena Radulović, Nada Šargin, Bojan Bulatović, Ljiljana Bralović, Nebojša Romčević, Igor Koruga, Jelena Ivetić, Nikita Milivojević, Marko Grabež, Jelena Mijović, Gabor Pongo, Eva Voštinić, Emina Spahić, Branislav Trifunović, Matija Stefanović, Nedim Nezirović, Jelena Stupljanin, Tamara Jovanović, Miloš Timotijević, Anđelka Nikolić, Milan Marić, Nela Antonović, and Milena Bogavac.
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The trial of those accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot began in September 2024 and concluded in December of the same year. At first, I followed the proceedings in the Avignon courtroom closely, but from November 1 onward, my attention was consumed by events in Serbia following the collapse of the canopy in Novi Sad. When I joined the livestream of The Pelicot Trial, I realized that these two acts of violence had converged into one space, revealing the world we live in—a world in which the fields of struggle know no borders, and where the fight against violence, especially systemic violence, must be constant, because any one of us can become a victim, anywhere.
Then I saw Milena Radulović’s pale face on stage, and that was the first moment I broke down. She sat calmly, reading stage directions and document numbers in a clear, steady voice. For nearly five hours, her voice never wavered. Midway through the performance, Vesna Trivalić stepped onto the stage and delivered a fifteen-minute monologue using the exact words spoken by Gisèle Pelicot during the trial. Trivalić spoke Gisèle’s sentence—“The façade still stands, but inside I am completely shattered”—as the monologue ended. Behind her stood Radulović, and of the three women sharing that moment of reality, she was the only one not crying.
Actors and actresses followed, figures deeply significant to this cultural and historical space appeared one after another, and I broke down for the third time when Emina Spahić, a student from Novi Pazar, stepped onto the stage. All the tears I had carried uncried since September 2024—tears I thought had already been exhausted after November 1 and Novi Sad—finally surfaced. Some scenes and performers I watched through that haze. There was no catharsis, no relief. But in the end, I felt gratitude—for the remarkable women, above all Gisèle Pelicot and Milena Radulović. They raised their voices for all of us, for every abused, raped, beaten, oppressed, and murdered woman in the world. Their strength is our future—and more importantly, the future of our daughters.
On a minimalist stage, raw documents from the court proceedings were read aloud. Everything was black except for the performers’ faces. The case of Gisèle Pelicot is one of the most disturbing criminal cases of our time. She was the victim of years of systematic rape, orchestrated by her husband, Dominique Pelicot, with whom she had been married for nearly fifty years and had three children and seven grandchildren.
Testimonies by her daughter, daughter-in-law, and Gisèle herself described what appeared to be an ordinary married couple who chose to spend their retirement in a house on the French coast, enjoying nature, peace, and family life. Yet for nearly a decade, Dominique secretly drugged her with sedatives, rendering her unconscious, and invited dozens of men into their home to rape her—while he recorded and documented everything. Gisèle was unaware of the crimes committed against her. For years, she suffered from health problems, memory loss, and a persistent sense that “something was wrong,” without knowing why.
The case came to light accidentally in 2020, when Dominique Pelicot was arrested for filming women under their skirts in a shopping mall. Police discovered thousands of videos and photographs documenting Gisèle’s abuse on his digital devices, along with evidence implicating dozens of perpetrators. In court, Dominique Pelicot pleaded guilty and was identified as the principal organizer. For multiple aggravated rapes, drugging the victim without her knowledge, organizing and inciting rape, producing and possessing criminally obtained pornographic material, and severe domestic violence, he received the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Fifty additional men of varying backgrounds were charged with rape or attempted rape, including rape of a person in a state of complete unconsciousness. Authorities are still searching for twenty unidentified perpetrators.
Gisèle Pelicot chose to be seen by the public during the trial, refusing anonymity and a closed courtroom in order to expose the scale of sexual violence. She dedicated her decision to open the trial to other women—not for herself, but for all those who suffer daily, enduring abuse and humiliation in various forms of domestic violence. What happened to her is monstrous and singular, to the point that it forces us all to ask: How is this possible?
Sentence by sentence, through the words of Gisèle Pelicot, judges, experts, doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, and the accused, we arrive at the answer: when a patriarchal society positions women—any woman—as an object, no one asks whether she has dignity, the right to life, or the right to choose. The fifty men who raped her hundreds of times over more than a decade were ordinary people—people who live among us, with us. We share beds, offices, family ties, traditions, and language with them. These are not distant strangers. They are men who play with our children, teach our children acting, share moments of joy and grief with us, drive us places, sell us food, live beside us.
Evil is everywhere around us—but shame has changed sides.
The Pelicot Trial can be viewed on YouTube.
