When, some twenty years ago, we were considering a new international festival of theatre and dance, we probably didn’t imagine that the festival would ever become this old, and even less that we would stay together as a team for so long. In fact, milestone anniversaries are interesting only insofar as they remind us of the fact that there was once a beginning and that there is continuity. They remind us that we had dreamt about something, and that we have never given up on this dream. What were we dreaming about? We were dreaming about an international festival with contemporaneity at the heart of the action, the driving force of change. About the possibility that we would not have to visit foreign cities to see the shows that are currently trending, but would be able to bring them here. We were dreaming of a festival that foreign artists would love to come to and share their dreams and explorations, and show us how they see and experience the world, both personally and socially. We wanted to create a festival that would be an oasis of freedom where contradiction could be confronted and intertwined: the international and the local, the old and the young, the bold and the conventional, the different and the common, the utopic and the dystopic. We were interested in cooperation, partnership, coexistence, joint exploration, visions. We want to create space for experience, where it only matters how much we are touched, stimulated, surprised by something, how much it made us think, opened up new perspectives, maybe even made us angry, mad, or gave us a new idea for action. The city has long since become our stage, we have discovered and revived numerous corners and new venues, conquered by both well established and non professional artists. Since the very beginning, the Mladi levi festival is considered, both home and abroad, to be an innovative festival of engaged content, of theatre performances and other hybrid art forms. Important current topics are being debated here, and the place glows with hospitable atmosphere and socializing. We have successfully voided the danger of commercialization, and even though we have expanded our scope of activities and interests, we are more interested in incisiveness, with and within the society, we want to ask the right questions and look for new forms of solidarity, both locally and globally.