Emir Kusturica

Emir Kusturica (Емир Кустурица; born 24 November 1954) is a Serbian film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and musician.

He also has French citizenship.

Through his father's friendship with the well-known director Hajrudin "Šiba" Krvavac, Kusturica, aged seventeen, got a small part in Krvavac's Walter Defends Sarajevo, a 1972 Partisan film funded by the Yugoslav state.

In 1978, Kusturica graduated from the film school (FAMU) at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, which is why he is sometimes considered a part of the Prague film school, an informal group of Yugoslav film directors who studied at FAMU and shared similar influences and aesthetics.

After graduating from FAMU, Kusturica began directing made-for-TV short films in Yugoslavia.

Kusturica is one of the most distinguished European filmmakers active since the mid-1980s, best known for surreal and naturalistic movies that express deep sympathies for people from the margins.

He has also been recognized for his projects in town-building.

He has competed at the Cannes Film Festival on five occasions and won the Palme d'Or twice (for When Father Was Away on Business and Underground), as well as the Best Director prize for Time of the Gypsies.

Kusturica has also won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Arizona Dream, a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Black Cat, White Cat and a Silver Lion for Best First Work for Do You Remember Dolly Bell?.

He has also been made a Commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

He made his feature film debut in 1981 with Do You Remember Dolly Bell?, a coming-of-age drama that won the prestigious Silver Lion for Best First Work at that year's Venice Film Festival.

Kusturica's second feature film, When Father Was Away on Business (1985), earned a Palme d'Or at Cannes and five Yugoslav movie awards, as well as a nomination for an American Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

The same year, at age 27, he became a lecturer at the newly established Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo, a job he held until 1988.

He was also art director of Open Stage Obala (Otvorena scena Obala).

In 1989 he earned more accolades for Time of the Gypsies, a film about Romani culture and the exploitation of their youth.

In 1989 he was a member of the jury at the 16th Moscow International Film Festival.

As he writes in 1993, his father's mother was "strongly tied to Muslim rites" while his father "did not belong to any cult, he was not religious at all".

Kusturica continued to make highly regarded films into the next decade, including his American debut, the absurdist comedy Arizona Dream (1993).

He won the Palme d'Or for his black comedy epic Underground (1995), based upon a scenario of Dušan Kovačević, a noted Serbian playwright.

He also taught Film Directing at Columbia University's Graduate Film Division.

In 1998, he won the Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion for Best Direction for Black Cat, White Cat, a farcical comedy set in a Gypsy (Romani) settlement on the banks of the Danube.

The music for the film was composed by the Belgrade-based band No Smoking Orchestra.

Since the mid-2000s, Kusturica's primary residence has been in Drvengrad, a town built for his film Life Is a Miracle, in the Mokra Gora region of Serbia.

He had portions of the historic village reconstructed for the film.

Kusturica primarily defined himself as Yugoslavian at least until the year 2000.

A lively youth, Kusturica was by his own admission a borderline delinquent while growing up in the Sarajevo neighbourhood of Gorica.

In 2001, Kusturica directed Super 8 Stories, a documentary road and concert movie about The No Smoking Orchestra, of which he is a band member.

Among other accolades, Kusturica became a UNICEF ambassador in 2002 and eight years later he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in France.

In 2002 Kusturica became an UNICEF National Ambassador for Serbia.

He was appointed President of the Jury of the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

His film Maradona by Kusturica, a documentary on Argentine football star Diego Maradona, was released in Italy in May 2007.

His film Promise Me This premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

In June 2007, Kusturica directed the music video to Manu Chao's single "Rainin in Paradize", from the latter's La Radiolina album.

It premiered in France during the Cannes Film Festival in 2008.

Since January 2008 he has organized the annual private Küstendorf Film Festival.

Its first installment was held at Drvengrad/Küstendorf, a village built for his film Life Is a Miracle, from 14 to 21 January 2008.

He published an autobiography "Smrt je neprovjerena glasina" (“Death Is an Unverified Rumour”) in 2010, followed by a book of fiction, "Sto jada" (“Hundreds of Troubles”), in 2013.

Kusturica was born in Sarajevo, the son of Murat Kusturica, a journalist employed at Sarajevo's Secretariat of Information, and Senka (Numankadić), a court secretary.

Emir grew up as the only child of a Muslim secular family in Sarajevo, the capital of PR Bosnia and Herzegovina, then a constituent republic within FPR Yugoslavia.

He has been a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Republika Srpska since 9 November 2011.