Biography for
Emir Kusturica More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

24 November 1954, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia

Nickname

Kusta

Height

6' 3" (1.91 m)

Mini Biography

A Serbian film director. Born in 1954 in Sarajevo. Graduated film directing at the prestigious Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague in 1978. During the studies, awarded several times for his short movies including Guernica (1978) which took first prize at Student's Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. After graduation, he directs several TV movies in hometown, Sarajevo. In collaboration with the screenwriter Abdulah Sidran in 1981. he made the successful feature debut _Sjecas li se, Dolly Bell (1981)_ which won best first film Golden Lion in Venice Film Festival. Their subsequent work, human political drama When Father Was Away on Business (1985) unanimously won top prize at 1985. Cannes Film Festival as well as FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Oscar. In 1989. he won Best Director award at Cannes for Time of the Gypsies (1988), movie about the life of gypsy family in Yugoslavia scripted by Gordan Mihic. Was professor of film directing in USA. His first English language movie, Arizona Dream (1993) starring Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway and scripted by his USA student, David Atkins was awarded Silver Bear at 1993 Berlin Film Festival. Underground (1995), bitter surrealistic comedy about Balkan, scripted by Dusan Kovacevic, took him second Golden Palm at Cannes Film Festival in 1995.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Aleksandar Novakovic (aleksandar@list.ru)

Spouse

Maja Kusturica

(? - present) 2 children

Trivia

In 1993, he challenged Vojislav Seselj, leader of Serbia's ultranationalist movement, to a duel. He suggested that it should be in the heart of Belgrade, at high noon (!), with any weapon Mr. Seselj chooses. Vojislav Seselj refused this offer saying that he "didn't want to be accused of a murder of an artist".

During the 1995 Belgrade International Film Festival Kusturica knocked down Nebojsa Pajkic, the leader of the New Serbian Right movement. Symbolically enough, Mrs. Pajkic tried to protect her husband by hitting Kusturica with a small bag, a present from Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Bosnian Serbs.

According to Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter 28 January, 2001, Emir Kusturica and Zabranjeno Pusenje recently had a gig in Moscow.

Since 1986 he has played bass guitar in "Zabranjeno Pusenje" (meaning Smoking Forbidden, or no smoking) a rock band from his hometown Sarajevo. In 1992 the lead singer of the band, Nele Karajlic, moved to Belgrade. In 1997 Kusturica and Karajlic started a new "faction" of the band called "The No Smoking Orchestra". The rest of the original band members stayed in Sarajevo and continued their own faction of the band. Super 8 Stories (2001) is a documentary about "No Smoking".

One of only five directors whose two movies won Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, other four being Francis Ford Coppola (The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979) ), Shôhei Imamura (The Ballad of Narayama (1983) and The Eel (1997) ), Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror (1987) and The Best Intentions (1992) ) and Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta (1999) and The Child (2005) ).

Is an only child.

Grew up in Sarajevo.

President of the jury at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

Has not been to Sarajevo, his birthplace, since 1992.

Has two children, Stribor and Dunja.

Member of jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993

In May of 2005, Kusturica was baptized in a Serbian Orthodox church, taking up the Serbian Christian name Nemanja. It was a very personal gesture to re-affirm his Serbian roots.

Often stays in Douains, Eure, France.

Often works with actors Slavko Stimac and Miki Manojlovic.

Father of Stribor Kusturica.

Personal Quotes

Every time I'm shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don't see the light in the end of the tunnel.

I am finished with cities. I spent four years in New York, 10 in Paris, and I was in Belgrade for a while. To me now they are just airports. Cities are humiliating places to live, particularly in this part of the world.

In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernise, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things. Since they don't have experience of the west, they even believe that western shit is pie.

OK, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks.

Everything must be sold! Everything must be for sale! Everyone must buy! Everyone must have a Jeep!

What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world. Why don't I see a Frank Capra today? Because people aren't like this anymore? People haven't changed that much in 60 years.

I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.

My purpose is to make a movie to make you warm. To give you some heat. Now, this rational world has become a place where only what is cool is good. Do you cut the movie on the basis of the beat of modernity or the basis of the beat of your own heart?

Milosevic's greatest mistake was that he thought that Serbs had numbered 250 million and that he had had two atomic bombs in his pocket.