Serb movie director. To state that
Emir Kusturica is Serb is a bit wrong : he was born and grew up in the country of
Yugoslavia, which has now disappeared. His movies, which take place in a
multicultural place, show this. His first movie,
Do You Remember Dolly Bell, is the autobiographical story of a teenager in
Sarajevo, who discovers the movies, rock music, and sexual arousal. His next movie,
When Father Was Away On Business, is about the political confusion of Yugoslavia at the end of the 40's, when if you had said
Stalin too much you would get in jail the next week. It won the
golden palm at the
Cannes Film Festival in 1985. His next movie is perhaps his most famous :
Time of the Gypsies describes the difficult life of this nomad people in Eastern Europe. He next would try to go to America, where he shot
Arizona Dream, which starred
Johnny Depp,
Faye Dunaway,
Jerry Lewis,
Vincent Gallo. It told the story of a few people of the Arizona who can't live in a world not fit for their dreams. However the movie was somewhat of a failure, so he went back to the then war-torn Yugoslavia, where he shot
Underground, about a man who secretly keeps in his cellar a whole group of
WWII rebels, telling them the war is not over, so that he can keep a woman. This movie tells much about what Emir thinks of Yugoslavia, why it is breaking up... His last movie up to now,
Black Cat, White Cat, leads us again in the gypsie world, and is a great comedy about those funny peoples.
Emir Kusturica's movies have all won awards in European film festivals. That is not the only thing they have in common : in all of them there is a wedding, a hanging, flying... And most important of all, the music. Gypsies and Yugoslavians all are fond of music, Emir himself was once a Bass Guitarist in a band... Music is indeed like a character in most of his movies. Goran Bregovic made the music of many of the movies ; Iggy Pop sung for the music of Arizona Dream. He is also always funny : his humor is often nonsensical, and it shows his characters are always glad to be alive. It saves his darker movies, like Underground, from being too dark.
It is to be noted that Kusturica, like Francis Ford Coppola, earned two golden palms. The two great movie directors even once met at Cannes. However, while Emir admires Coppola, Francis wasn't even aware of the Serb director's existance...