The initial edition of the festival included screening of the films by Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard as well as public lectures by Slavoj Žižek, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and others.

[4] Che Guevara's daughter Aleida was one of the guests in 2013, as well as Alexis Tsipras, the head of Greece's leftist SYRIZA parliamentary group, both taking part in debates at the festival.

The first Wild Dreamer Award for Lifetime Achievement was given to Oliver Stone, whose latest 10-hour-long series the Untold History of the United States was shown in the main film programme.

The Land of Hope by Japanese director Shion Sono, a story about a family whose father refuses to evacuate his sick wife from a radiation affected area, won the Best Feature Award.

According to the organizers, the Subversive forum has become "one of the key European mobilisation points for activists and intellectuals from the region and the world, thinking jointly how to build better social systems"[5] The Balkan Forum was established in 2012 as the platform for cooperation for pan-Balkan social and political movements and organisations from 10 post-socialist countries (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, and with strong participation from Hungary).

A huge number of activists gathered in 2012 and 2013 to discuss topics relevant to the region, including neoliberal policies, rampant privatisation, the defense of the Commons, student and workers movements, sex and gender equality, social change, as well as the questions of democratisation and participation, the media and public sphere, and alternative economic models.

In this context, the visit of the head of the Greek opposition Syriza Alexis Tsipras and film director Oliver Stone was particularly followed both by local audience and international media.

Many prominent intellectuals have given keynote lectures and participated in public debates, including Slavoj Žižek, Oliver Stone, Alexis Tsipras, Tariq Ali, Aleida Guevara, Terry Eagleton, Gayatri Spivak, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Saskia Sassen, Wang Hui, Minqi Li, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, David Harvey, Erik Olin Wright, Bernard Stiegler, Franco Berardi, Karl-Markus Gauss, Renata Salecl, Boris Buden, Dubravka Ugrešić, Želimir Žilnik, Aleš Debeljak, Samir Amin etc.