Serbian director Emir Kusturica, a two-time Cannes top award winner, considers making a film in Crimea.
Kusturica spoke about his plans in Moscow at the opening ceremony for the National Film School. He was quoted by Russian News Service as saying that he hasn’t yet decided whether the film will be focused on the 1850s Crimean War, which Russia lost to an alliance of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia, or events of World War II.
Since this March’s Maidan revolution in Kiev, which led to the toppling of Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Kusturica has been repeatedly voicing support for the Kremlin’s stance on Ukraine.
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“Russia ought to protect ethnic Russians living in Ukraine and save the country from catastrophe,” he said this March, comparing current events in Ukraine to what happened to the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
Earlier this year, Kusturica announced another project, which he is going to direct, an adaptation of Italian author Primo Levi‘s 1982 novel Se non ora, quando? (If Not Now, When?). The movie is to be filmed next year in Italy and Belarus as a co-production between France’s Cinema Solei and Belarus’ state-run film company Belarusfilm.
Kusturica often comes to Russia and is currently doing a tour of the country with his band, The No Smoking Orchestra.
