Emir Kusturica: top 7 films – Motherland

Kusturica’s films are soulful, sincere, funny and sad, with a dose of grotesque (for which he is called the “Balkan Fellini”). “I see my purpose in making films that would make you feel warmer,” the director admitted. His graduation short film “Guernica”, created in 1978 while studying at the FAMU Film School in Prague, received the main prize at the Karlovy Vary Student Film Festival. And after that there were many other films and prestigious awards.

“Do you remember, Dolly Bell?”, 1981

Kusturica’s debut feature film (the director shot it at the age of 26) received the Golden Lion and the FIPRESCI prize at the Venice Film Festival. The main character, the young man Dino, lives in the 1960s in Sarajevo, the city where the director was born. He develops his ability to hypnosis and dreams of conquering the prostitute Dolly Bell. Kusturica took the name of the heroine from the 1959 Italian film “Europa di notte” directed by Alessandro Blasetti – in it that was the name of the stripper.

The characters in the film speak the Bosnian dialect of the Serbian language, and Adriano Celentano’s hit “24 Thousand Kisses” as well as folk melodies are used as the soundtrack.

During the 1981 Venice Film Festival, Kusturica served in the army. To go for the Golden Lion, he had to take special permission from the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense to leave the military unit for a day.

“Dad on a Business Trip”, 1985

The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was also nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars and Golden Globes.

The film takes place in Sarajevo in the late 1940s and early 50s. Six-year-old Malik’s dad often goes on business trips – that’s what he calls trips to his mistresses in different cities. The narration comes from the boy’s point of view. Malik begins to suspect that his dad is deceiving everyone and is very worried about him. One of the mistresses writes a denunciation against the man, he is imprisoned, and the family is forced to survive without a breadwinner. The picture turned out to be tough and at the same time ironic, with elements of the absurd and grotto – in the signature style of Kusturica.

The director wrote the script for “Daddy” together with Abdulah Sidran (together they had already worked on the film “Do You Remember, Dolly Bell?”). Kusturica recalled that this took only a week, while staying in Dubrovnik, at the Imperial Hotel. In one of the interviews, the director said that he wanted to tell how the protagonist’s father was destroyed politically, and how this affected the development of his son.

For Kusturica, it was partly a biographical film: his father was an oppositionist and opposed the regime of dictator Tito. In the mid-80s, this topic was difficult for Yugoslavia, the director was accused of “political blindness”, he had to rewrite the script. Because of the pressure, he even wanted to emigrate to another country.

Kusturica did not go to the award ceremony in Cannes – he excused himself with the strange excuse that he needed to lay parquet in a friend’s apartment in Sarajevo. In fact, the reason was political. “If I had known that they would give me an award to declare the film anti-communist, I would have refused it,” the director later noted.

“Time of the Gypsies”, 1988

The original title of the film was “Dom za vešanje” (“House for Hanging” – an association with the proverb “In the house of a hanged man, they don’t talk about rope”), but the distributors changed it to “Time of the Gypsies”, believing that the public would perceive it better this way. Kusturica received the prize for best director for the film at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. Milos Forman said that the director is “the hope of European cinema.”

The film is considered one of the best in Kusturica’s career. This is a phantasmagoric tragicomedy in which he mixed love, betrayal, magic, drama and much more. “For gypsies, there is only money, love, family. Nothing superfluous,” Kusturica said in an interview. He was well acquainted with the culture of this people – his family lived next to a gypsy village. The director considered his life “boring” and envied the gypsy teenagers, who, in his opinion, had complete freedom of action.

The main character of the film, the young man Perkhan, wants to earn money for his wedding and help his disabled sister get back on her feet. He goes on a trip with the gypsy baron Ahmet to Italy to become rich. In the history of world cinema, this is the first film that was shot in Romani (the language of Western European gypsies). The brilliant soundtrack was written by composer Goran Bregovic, with whom Kusturica will continue to work on two more films.

The film took a long time to create: the director admitted that he started filming it in the mid-80s, when he was 30 years old, and released it in 1989. Also, in addition to the movie, there is a five-hour television version of “The Time of the Gypsies.” And in 2007, Kusturica released a remake of the film on the stage of the Opera Bastille – a punk opera, the music for which was written by Dejan Sparavalo, Nenad Jankovic and the director’s son, musician of the group “The No Smoking Orchestra” Stribor (in this group Kusturica plays guitar) .

Arizona Dream, 1993

Kusturica’s first film, shot in English, starred Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway, and Jerry Lewis. The film received the special jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival – the Silver Bear and was nominated for the Golden Bear.

The Arizona Dream was born out of a coincidence. Milos Forman invited Kusturica to lecture at Columbia University. One of the listeners brought him a script, which later became the basis for the film. “The Dream” tells about a young man Axel Blackmar (his name is taken from the lead singer of the band Guns N “Roses Axl Rose, and his slightly corrected last name is from Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore), a resident of the American outback. All the characters in the film dream of something and achieve something. their own, or they will be disappointed. The music was again written by Goran Bregovic, the song “In the Death Car” performed by Iggy Pop became a hit.

The surreal film failed at the box office, after which Kusturica announced that he would no longer work in Hollywood.

“Underground”, 1995

For this painting, Kusturica received his second Palme d’Or. Many critics believed that the film was the pinnacle of the director’s creativity – it was called epoch-making.

The action in the film takes place over half a century. The main characters are members of the underground who, during the Second World War, produced weapons to fight the Nazis, and after its end continued to fight, not knowing that the fighting had ended.

The film lasts three hours, the director also made a five-hour TV version. “Underground” is the third and last film in which Kusturica collaborated with Bregovic. After that, they quarreled: the reason was the director’s accusation that the composer passed off folk songs as his work and refused to pay for the creation of the soundtrack. The music for Kusturica’s next films was written by the group “The No Smoking Orchestra”.

This drama became morally difficult for the director: he was accused of propaganda and that the film turned out to be “pro-Serbian-nationalist.” Kusturica admitted that he experienced serious depression and even wanted to leave cinema.

“Black cat, white cat”, 1998

The film received the Silver Lion and the Small Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. After watching, the critics (which happens very rarely) received a standing ovation. The literal translation of the name is “Black cat, white cat.” Cats are indeed one of the heroes of the film.

Kusturica returned to the story of the gypsies again – a sparkling comedy tells about two elderly barons who met after a quarter of a century. This leads to a series of different events. It is interesting that the characters in the film speak three languages ​​at once – Gypsy, Serbian and Bulgarian.

“Black Cat, White Cat” is called the director’s most cheerful film, which he shot as his own “antidepressant” after the difficult “Underground”.

Initially, Kusturica planned to create a documentary about gypsy music. But then I decided to add a few artistic touches to the script. “Like Fellini, Kusturica finds true grace where you least expect it, and makes films completely uncompromisingly original,” critics wrote.

“Life is like a miracle”, 2004

The film was nominated for the Palme d’Or, but critics received it more coolly than the director’s past works. The film also received a nomination for the Russian Golden Eagle film award as the best film in a foreign language, released in the domestic box office.

Kusturica again returned to the history of his native country and the war in Bosnia. The main character of the comedy melodrama is Luka; his mentally ill wife and their son are going through a difficult period: fighting begins, the family breaks up. Life presents heroes with many challenges and surprises. “Life is a Miracle” was called one of Kusturica’s most optimistic films.

Especially for filming, the director built the village of Drvengrad (or Kustendorf) on the border of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It has turned into an ethnographic settlement, where tourists come and where he himself periodically lives. Here you can see exhibits that have already become historical – old cars from Kusturica’s paintings, including the car that drove on the railway in “Life is a Miracle”.

“I lost my city (Sarajevo) during the war. And so I wanted to build my own village. It has the German name Küstendorf. I will organize workshops there for those who want to learn how to make films. I dream of an open place with cultural diversity that confronts globalization,” said the director.

The village also has a Stanley Kubrick theater, a sports club, a restaurant, a pastry shop, the Main House, where there is a cinema hall, guest rooms and a separate space for the Kusturica family. The director named the streets in the village in honor of those whom he highly values: Federico Fellini, Diego Maradona, Nikola Tesla, Ingmar Bergman and others.

Since 2008, it has hosted a film and music festival known for its lack of red carpet.