Mittelfest Tabù

Mittelfest 2025 – Tabù18–27 July | Cividale del Friuli (Italy)34th editionMittelfest 2025 explores the theme of “Taboo”, bringing to the stage everything that is hidden, silenced or forbidden by culture, history or convention. Taboos are invisible rules that define the boundaries of what is acceptable. They shape our societies, protect or constrain us — but they also challenge art to question, to investigate, to break the silence.From 18 to 27 July, the 34th edition of Mittelfest turns Cividale del Friuli, a UNESCO World Heritage city, into a European crossroads of performance, thought and imagination. Theatre, music, dance and circus take on the task of confronting what cannot — or must not — be said.The programme explores the great taboos of our time: the body, sexuality, religion, as well as historical memory, political identities, and the evolving frontiers of technology and artificial intelligence.Mittelfest has always been a place where art speaks to the present. Artistic director Giacomo Pedini curates a programme with artists from across Europe, with a special focus on the Central and Eastern scene — a core identity of the festival. Different cultures, languages and sensitivities come together in Cividale to shed new light on what taboos mean today: who defies them, who suffers them, who protects them, and who breaks them.Alongside established artists, three performances from Mittelyoung will be presented as part of the official Mittelfest programme. Selected by a peer jury from under-30 artists across Europe, they bring to the stage a bold and urgent vision of the present.Mittelfest is a border festival — not only in geography, but in spirit. A European laboratory where disciplines meet, where art and thought collide, and where the audience is invited to rethink its own boundaries.The programme unfolds across Cividale’s symbolic spaces — theatres, churches, courtyards, and town squares — turning the city into a map of artistic experience. Each show is an invitation to question the visible and the invisible, rules and exceptions, power and resistance.Mittelfest 2025 is an invitation to look where we don’t usually look, to listen to what has been silenced, to share spaces and visions with those who live — as artists or spectators — on the edge. Because a taboo, once named, is never the same again.