Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

Most people only remember Maradona for the bad parts now. But he was a genius, someone who lifted us and himself up to the level of the gods.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

Every time I'm shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don't see the light in the end of the tunnel.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

The advantage of the gypsy language, even though I don't understand it that much, the language is perfect melody. So if you propose the movie the way I do, then the language is just one part of the melody. Orchestrating all inside, and the language is following the meaning of what they say, and it's never the same as written.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I never wanted an independent Bosnia. I wanted Yugoslavia. That is my country.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I think the city is the strongest social memory organ of humanity.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

Yugoslavia was a kind of superpower. Great movies. Beautiful novels. Great rock-and-roll. We became a superpower in basketball. The problem is that people needed to identify more strongly with it after Tito and his awful, tricky way of leading the country.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

Every movie that I do, if you analyze the stories, you can notice that in each story, that within the movie after the first 15 minutes, it could fall apart. Or every 10 minutes it has the chance that you lose the thread. On the other hand, if you succeed in putting them together, then the movie looks spontaneous and more like cinema.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I am finished with cities. I spent four years in New York, ten in Paris, and I was in Belgrade for a while. To me now they are just airports.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I am a man with a lot of passion.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I know it is crazy, but I want to create a place where people can come in an organised way to think differently, to think their own thoughts.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I was a big fighter when I was younger. In bars I was ready to explode and fight.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

That is a Medieval way of drawing history, in which they do not respect the law and want the rest of the world to respect the law. That's not possible.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I will not cut my film because, because, because, because of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I put my ideas into practice. That may be the reason people hate me.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I've been around some very famous people, but no one has the effect Maradona has; people tremble in his presence.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

Just because I believe in the identity and integrity of my country doesn't make a xenophobe or a nationalist.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernize, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things.

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

My purpose is to make a movie to make you warm. To give you some heat. Now, this rational world has become a place where only what is cool is good. Do you cut the movie on the basis of the beat of modernity or the basis of the beat of your own heart?

Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica

I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.