THE 5th CHERRY POP FESTIVAL
Story behind Cherry Pop Festival 2026 edition
Not everything between two people is easy to name. Intimacy, connection, boundaries, silence — the 5th Cherry Pop Festival turns to all of it this October, through film, art and conversation.
Titled Between Us, this year’s edition explores what often goes unspoken: emotional and physical intimacy, toxic relationships, sexual violence. We invite you to question how we connect, where lines are drawn, and what happens when the things between us become hard to say out loud.
October 22–24, Dokukino│Surogatkino KIC & Klet, Zagreb — three days of films, workshops, performance, panels and an erotic quiz.
Sweet Cherries short film competition
Sweet Cherries is Cherry Pop’s short film competition — 14 films from around the world, unfiltered takes on the body, desire, gender and the relationships that shape us. Funny, tender, strange and sometimes uncomfortable, always honest.
This year’s selection is judged by Laura Pascu (director), Dinko Štimac (film critic), and Lucija Ćeškić (FUSE film festival director).
🍒 Who takes home the cherry this year?
Cherry Pick
Cherry Pick is Cherry Pop’s accompanying program of longer, standalone titles that dig deeper into this year’s theme.
A feature follows two artists as passion curdles into conflict; a documentary uncovers decades of silence around domestic violence within one family.
Completing the lineup, a guest block with FUSE – Film Under Severe Experiment from Karlovac, brings three short films on gender-based violence.
Different stories, one question: what really happens between us?
Pan-Erotikum
Film is only half the story. Pan Erotikum is where Cherry Pop gets hands-on: an installation, a performance, a panel, an intimacy workshop — even a quiz and an afterparty to dance it all off.
This is the side of the festival you don’t just watch, you step into. Come curious, come with questions, come ready to talk about the things we usually leave unsaid.
🍒 This is where the festival really comes alive.
Cherry Pop Festival program & schedule
THURSDAY 22 / 10 / 2026
17:30 h – Pan-Erotikum 1 / Zapadni Kolodvor
The installation “Mess” explores how social norms, power relations and patterns of behaviour are shaped and reproduced through everyday life. Rather than focusing on explicit forms of violence, it examines the subtle gestures, expectations and microaggressions that shape relationships and often go unnoticed.
Using toys, play and the visual language of childhood, the work turns familiar symbols of safety and innocence into carriers of manipulation, emotional violence and everyday power dynamics. Photo-collages featuring fragmented figures further explore the contradictions between social ideals and lived experience.
Combining humour, absurdity and discomfort, the installation invites us to question the everyday rituals, language and behaviours through which power relations become normalised.
Besides on the opening day you can see installation on guided tours by applying to matej@cherrypopfilmfestival.net
See you in the east wing of Zapadni kolodvor.
19 h – Cherry Pick 1 / Dokukino│Surogatkino KIC
Marina and David, two young artists, no longer feel the same passion that they’ve had for one another upon the early stages of their relationship.
As time goes on, tensions grow and it all reaches a powerful breaking point.
21 h – Film competition Sweet Cherries 1 / Dokukino│Surogatkino KIC
After a long wait, the eagerly awaited package containing the new Venus 2000 has finally arrived.
First, it’s time to celebrate with a beer, and then, of course, try out the machine.
Going home at night, Gucci bumps into Olivia, an androgynous sex worker. This unexpected encounter will dive him into a mysterious world, where unconscious desires meet irrepressible impulses and intimate interrogations.
Enter the intimate world of two friends who are examining the phenomenon of the dick pic – a symbol, they argue, of a deeper crisis within sexual imagination.
How do images of the male organ operate in today’s visual landscape? Do they wield any real power? And what might this phenomenon reveal about the nature of masculinity and male desire?
Born from a vital need for genuine safety and self-expression, this intimate documentary follows a collective of kinky, queer, trans, and non-binary individuals who chose to build a world of their own. After years of navigating mixed play parties, they established a dedicated separatist space, a sanctuary explicitly designed to strip away judgment, performativity, and outside power dynamics.
Laura is trapped in a toxic relationship with a famous rapper. After a violent argument, her reality starts to warp, straddling the line between the familiar and the distorted, the everyday and the hallucinatory.
FRIDAY 23 / 10 / 2026
17:30 h – Pan-Erotikum 2 / Dokukino│Surogatkino KIC
In a society that lacks systematic and meaningful education on violence and gender equality, it is important to also turn our attention to unhealthy — and sometimes difficult to recognise — patterns of behaviour that are present in everyday situations and relationships.
Violence is not limited to physical acts; it can also manifest through emotional manipulation, control, and humiliation.
Within intimate relationships, these aspects of toxicity are often silenced or perhaps simply go unrecognised.
The discussion will be held in Croatian and will feature Croatian experts as panellists. The discussion will be moderated by Karla Kostadinovski.
19 h – Cherry Pick 2 / Dokukino│Surogatkino KIC
A family in the 60s on Super8. Stories of a violent husband fifty years later. A film about the invisibility of domestic violence.
Awards:
- German Film Award for Best Mid-Length Film,
- Special Mention International Competition DMZ,
- Special Mention Sofia Documental,
- Best Mid-Length Film Achtung Berlin
21 h – Film competition Sweet Cherries 2 / Dokukino│Surogatkino KIC
Lesya and her daughter Anya are living in a refugee camp, grappling with the torment of blackmail related to the disappearance of Lesya’s husband, who went missing during the war a year ago.
In the camp, Lesya reconnects with her old friend Maria, a widow who, like Lesya, is haunted by the loss of a loved one. As their bond deepens, the women find solace in each other’s shared grief.
Every day, Joëlle meets her retired friends on Bain des Dames’s beach in Marseille. Like in an open-air theater, they laugh, talk about love, sex, aging bodies, and remake the world with the freedom of those who have nothing left to prove.
Between a workout and a class, Brxe uses the shower to give herself a moment, quick but precious. A chance to recenter, feel her body, before time catches up with her. Through the contact with water, the film explores what moves through the mind during self-eroticism: fleeting fantasies, fragile focus, and the way imagination drifts in a stressful everyday life.
When a young couple spends a day in the countryside, suppressed tensions bubble to the surface, as they struggle to communicate on questions of power and responsibility.
Dora’s quiet longing to belong unravels into despair when her younger sister Nika is unexpectedly invited to join her boyfriend and his friends at Rijeka’s Carnival.
SATURDAY 24 / 10 / 2026
10 h – Pan-Erotikum 3 / Klet
The intimacy workshop led by Jasmina Mehulić explores the small, often unnoticed gestures and patterns of behaviour that can have a significant impact on the quality of a relationship.
The workshop is intended for couples and individuals who want to develop skills for warmer and more connected intimate relationships. Through short and fun research-based exercises, we will learn how to listen more attentively, how to provide the kind of support the other person actually needs, and how to share in and celebrate good moments together.
Intimacy is built not only through grand gestures, but above all through everyday actions that create space for understanding, trust, and mutual care. At this workshop, you will learn practical tools for building and maintaining a strong relationship.
The number of participants is limited to 16. Registration is required, and the individual participation fee (€8) is payable on site as a donation.
Register here.
17 h – Cherry Pick 3 / Dokukino│Surogatkino KIC
A guest block with FUSE – Film Under Severe Experiment from Karlovac, brings three short films on exploring boundries of body and mind.
BOÏ is a film about authors pre-transition (FtM) that performs the body with digital and 3D
During a night at a free party, Aimée slips into a psychedelic journey where the boundary between reality and illusion dissolves. She senses the echo of an answer, a truth buried in a corner of her mind, ready to resurface in the turn of a dream.
Trigger warning: sexual assault
Short student film created for assignment – one-take shot
Trigger warning: sexual assault
18 h – Pan Erotikum 4 / Klet
The association Nepopularna psihologija (Unpopular Psychology) will host a quiz that blends sexuality, psychology, and pop culture!
The quiz covers diverse (un)popular culture topics related to psychology – with a special emphasis on sexuality and reproductive health. The questions are suited for the general audience – educational background isn’t important because the emphasis is on the knowledge of pop culture!
In different categories, which include written, visual, audio, and audiovisual questions, we will be testing your knowledge of music, film, literature, and other forms of popular culture that contain psychological and (more or less) sexy elements.
The maximum number of members in one team is 4. The suggested donation is 3€ per member.
You can sign up for the quiz here: https://bit.ly/sexy-psiho-prijave
19 h – Sweet Cherries 3 / Dokukino│Surogatkino KIC
Hyodo lives near Tokyo in a vibrant house filled with hundreds of sex dolls.
An unconventional character living amidst the normalcy and conformity of Japan, his life blurs the lines between reality and fantasy.
Hyodo’s hedonistic, imaginative world is explored unflinchingly in an affectionate portrait of a deeply complex man.
Daria has written her first manuscript about falling in love with a mysterious girl called ‘abi’ [blue]. The night flowers in her garden hide the secrets of a country that has turned love stories into routine crime scenes.
Drawing from films where women are denied agency over their lives, this film reimagines a story of vengeance for survival.
After managing to scrape together money to pay for an abortion after her Polish exchange student boyfriend gets her pregnant, the director decides to celebrate with a party.
In attendance are her geriatric ska musician neighbor, semi-retired gang affiliates, her dirty gay roomate, and ever present bedbugs.
Azaa and Shagai, a couple in their late 20s, are living in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, with their 6-year-old daughter.
On the verge of divorce, they search for happiness in empty, high-rise buildings. Stuck in their car in the infamous city traffic, they fight it out.
20:15 h – Award ceremony / Dokukino│Surogatkino KIC
Closing ceremony and announcement of this years Sweet Cherries winners.
21 h – Pan Erotikum 6 / Klet
The performance What Doesn’t Kill You… explores how digital platforms deliberately exploit human emotions. Today, algorithmic systems are not designed to spread truth or empathy. On the contrary, they are optimized to encourage hate comments and controversy, consciously playing on our laughter, anger, and shame.
Within this system, toxic content generates the highest levels of engagement and profit, while users, driven by the illusion of entertainment and play, become willing accomplices in a quiet, automated form of violence.
Ana Katulić is an actress and performer whose artistic practice lies at the intersection of text, personal experience, and documentary testimony.
21:30 h – Pan Erotikum 7 / Klet
Afterparty with DJ Meka Drina
