In front of a full audience at Island Hotel Katarina, the 18th edition of Rovinj Photodays — the largest festival of contemporary photography in Croatia — officially concluded with the annual awards ceremony and the announcement of this year’s Grand Prix winner.
Awards were presented across six official categories, and the finalists’ works were unveiled at the central group exhibition on Friday at the Multimedia Center (MMC) Rovinj, marking the highlight of this year’s festival program.
GRAND PRIX ROVINJ PHOTODAYS 2025
Marko Đurić, representative of Epson — one of the festival’s main sponsors — presented the Grand Prix award to Mitar Simikić, a documentary photographer from Bosnia and Herzegovina, winner in the Landscape category and a finalist in the Portrait category.
This prestigious award grants Simikić a solo exhibition at Rovinj Photodays 2026, along with an accompanying publication and a €2,000 cash prize.
“The very name Ugljevik — derived from the word ugalj (coal) — defines a town born beside a mine. It was conceived as the ‘perfect place’ where everyone would have the same houses, the same jobs, the same standard of living — in short, a place where everyone would be equally happy and successful. A vision of communist idealism brought into socialist practice.
For a while, it seemed to work. Everything looked possible. But reality always arrives suddenly, without warning, ready to dismantle what once appeared solid.
The Ugljevik thermal power plant, one of the largest electricity producers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was put into operation in 1985. Its construction required the relocation of nearly 200 households from surrounding villages. The coal that powers the plant is extracted via open-pit mining. In the past four years alone, mine expansion has displaced another 50 households. A few families remain, living right next to the pit. Former residents still mourn their lost homeland — the backyards of their childhood, the soil they grew up on.
‘The mine and the power plant gave us everything we had — and took everything we had… We were practically the first refugees of Yugoslavia. What was taken from us can’t be compared to what we might gain in the future.’
More than history, this is a story of constant transformation — a metaphor for the restless life and fate of the people of this region. A state of permanent exile, uprooted identity, and denied belonging, woven deeply into the fragile fabric of the ‘inner landscape’ of people striving to find roots in an unstable and unpredictable world.”
— Mitar Simikić
