39 Facts About Emir Kusturica

Emir Kusturica is a Serbian film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and musician.

Emir Kusturica has been recognized for his projects in town-building.

Emir Kusturica has competed at the Cannes Film Festival on five occasions and won the Palme d'Or twice, as well as the Best Director prize for Time of the Gypsies.

Emir Kusturica has been made a Commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Since the mid-2000s, Emir 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.

Emir Kusturica had portions of the historic village reconstructed for the film.

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

Emir Kusturica published an autobiography "Smrt je neprovjerena glasina" in 2010, followed by a book of fiction, "Sto jada", in 2013.

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

Emir Kusturica 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.

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

In 1978, Emir Kusturica graduated from the film school 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.

Emir Kusturica was art director of Open Stage Obala.

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

Emir Kusturica won the Palme d'Or for his black comedy epic Underground, based upon a scenario of Dusan Kovacevic, a noted Serbian playwright.

Emir Kusturica taught Film Directing at Columbia University's Graduate Film Division.

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

Emir Kusturica was appointed President of the Jury of the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

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

In 2002 Emir Kusturica became an UNICEF National Ambassador for Serbia.

Emir Kusturica's next film, Cool Water, is a comedy set against the background of a Middle East conflict.

In September 2012, Emir Kusturica accepted an offer to be the head juror of the first Saint Petersburg International Film Festival.

Emir Kusturica ended up playing bass on three track from the band's third studio album Pozdrav iz zemlje Safari and composing one of the songs as well as directing a music video for the track "Manijak" off the album.

Emir Kusturica's autobiography, Death is an Unverified Rumour, was published in October 2010 in Belgrade by Novosti.

Drvengrad is a traditional village that Emir Kusturica built for his film Life Is a Miracle.

The reverence Emir Kusturica enjoys in the film circles along with his professional and personal contacts ensure the arrival of top guests from the European and world cinema every year.

On 28 June 2011 Emir Kusturica started the construction project of Andricgrad, located in Visegrad, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was scheduled to be completed by 2014.

Emir Kusturica is married to Maja Mandic; the couple has two children.

When his mother was on her deathbed he wanted to find out his ancestry and learnt that the origin of the Emir Kusturica family stemmed from two Orthodox Christian branches.

In Granica, there was a family surnamed Emir Kusturica which had left Plana 80 years earlier.

Emir Kusturica was an early supporter of Ante Markovic's Union of Reform Forces of Yugoslavia.

Emir Kusturica was present at the Kremlin for Putin's third inauguration as president in May 2012.

Emir Kusturica has expressed support for the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea.

Emir Kusturica was awarded the Order of St Sava, First Class, for his "selfless care and presentation of the Serbian nation in the world", on 12 May 2012.

Andrej Nikolaidis, a Montenegrin writer and columnist, criticized Emir Kusturica for appearing to agree with Slobodan Milosevic's propaganda during the Bosnian War.

Emir Kusturica sued Nikolaidis and the Monitor newspaper for civil damages at the Supreme Court of Montenegro.

In October 2010, Emir Kusturica withdrew from the jury of Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival after being publicly criticized and accused by Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu and Turkey's minister of culture Ertugrul Gunay over his alleged remarks and opinions about the Bosnian War.

The criticism of Emir Kusturica was started by an organization called the Turkish-Bosnian Cultural Federation as soon as Emir Kusturica was announced as a jury member.

Public sentiment in Turkey and in Serbia was such that a couple of days after Emir Kusturica left Turkey, there were unsubstantiated news reports by Serbian tabloids claiming that a mob of Turkish youths in Antalya physically assaulted Swiss actor Michael Neuenschwander because they mistook him for Emir Kusturica due to apparent physical resemblances between the two.