Željko Malnar (12 April 1944 – 9 July 2013) was a Croatian maverick traveller, writer and a fringe television celebrity, best known for his own weekly show Nightmare Stage and his satirical micronation the Republic of Peščenica.

Malnar authored over 100 documentary films and reports[1] from Turkey, Jordan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Samoa, the South Pacific, New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, etc.

In 1986 he got the city keys to Fort Worth, Dallas in the U.S. state of Texas from mayor Bob Bolan as a reward for bringing cultures and peoples.

In 1992, Malnar started producing Nightmare Stage, a show that hosted many picturesque characters from the streets of Zagreb (Cro Rom, Stankec, Tarzan, Jaran, Laki, Ševa etc.).

Malnar proclaimed himself the president of the so-called Republic of Peščenica (Zagreb suburb) in the beginning of the 1990s, a satirical-parodical project, a parody on contemporary Croatian political scene.

[2] In 2005, Malnar's TV show included shots from a local pornographic movie, which caused the Croatian agency for electronic media regulation to censure his then-station OTV and force it off the air for a period of 24 hours.

In Turkey, Malnar found out that the war broke out in Croatia so he decided to travel under Croatian flag instead of Yugoslav, resulting in cancellation of sponsorship which lead to financial problems.