Time Will Tell… A Review of Sorts: Love International 2023

The festival’s setting plays a part in this peculiar time phenomenon. The three-hour lunches and four-hour boat parties create unique pockets of time, blending with the periods on dry land in a way that blurs the boundaries between day and night. That period back on the dock that twists and turns until you get back on a level with the party without their sea legs. The evenings seem to stretch indefinitely, as if mirroring the vastness of the Adriatic itself… and then it’s morning again, it’s 30 degrees, and you need to put more sun tan lotion on your neck as you’re still at the Olive Grove.

A week of catching up with friends you haven’t seen since that last time you were in Tisno, seemingly like no time had passed under the bridge – the bridge in the middle of town that you always get caught the wrong side of when it’s up at that time of the day you’ve still not noted down.  Not to worry though, the week is long, whether you land for the whole seven days or just a slice of it there is enough to go around. The programming doesn’t stop for 24 hours, skewing how you can make your time work – it’s usually easier to let it just wash over you.

There is something you can’t bottle about this festival, greater than the sum of its parts. A temporary autonomous zone of sorts. “…temporary moments of liberty in the cracks…stateless moments of joy where we can experience, however briefly, freedom from the pernicious creep of neoliberalism.”

The programming is thoughtful, with some interesting curveballs, bringing new faces alongside those that come back year on year. The same goes for the crowd, with an injection of new energy alongside those that return en-masse. It’s all that and more though. Other festivals have these components and yet don’t seem to have that. Love International evolves each year without ever losing its true essence.