When Father Was Away on Business

Emir Nemanja Kusturica, (born 24 November 1954 in Sarajevo, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia) is a Serbian filmmaker, actor and musician of Bosnian origin, with a string of internationally acclaimed features.

He won the Palme d’Or at Cannes twice (for When Father Was Away on Business and Underground ), and he is also a recipient of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. On 8 September 2007, Kusturica became a UNICEF National Ambassador for Serbia, alongside Ana Ivanović, Jelena Janković and Aleksandar Đorđević. Kusturica resides in Drvengrad, a village he had built for his film Life Is a Miracle.

Born to Murat Kusturica (journalist employed at SR Bosnia and Herzegovina Secretariat of Information) and Senka Numankadić (court secretary) young Emir grew up as the only child in a family in a secular Bosnian Muslim family the Sarajevo neighbourhood of Gorica.

After graduating from the Film Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) in 1978, Kusturica began directing made-for-TV television shorts in former Yugoslavia. He made his feature film debut in 1981 with Do You Remember Dolly Bell?, which won the prestigious Golden Lion for Best First Work at that year’s Venice Film Festival. From 1981 to 1988 he was a lecturer at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo (Akademija Scenskih Umjetnosti) and art director of Open Stage Obala (Otvorena scena Obala).

His second feature film, When Father Was Away on Business (1985), earned a Palme d’Or at Cannes and five Yugoslavian movie awards, as well as being nominated for an American Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. He wrote the screenplays for both Do You Remember Dolly Bell? and When Father Was Away on Business in collaboration with Abdulah Sidran. In 1989, Kusturica earned even more accolades for Time of the Gypsies, a film about gypsy culture and the exploitation of their youth.

Kusturica continued to make highly regarded films into the next decade, including his American debut, the absurdist comedy Arizona Dream (1993) and the Palme d’Or-winning black comedic epic, Underground (1995), based upon a scenario of Dušan Kovačević, famous Serbian playwright.

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 (Romany) settlement on the banks of the Danube. The music for the film was composed by the Belgrade-based band No Smoking Orchestra. —Wikipedia