Remembering Sarajevo

Last May, Emir Kusturica's most recent work started showing. Life is a Miracle is more than just a glance at the war in Bosnia. Born in Sarajevo in 1954, Kusturica is the mad poet par excellence projecting the beauty he sees in the background of the tragedy which his deceased country went through a decade ago. And in Kusturica's films - and definitely in this last one - tragedy encounters humour and irony rules supreme. According to Kusturica, the Yugoslav tragedy had nothing to do with religous beliefs, but rather with the rise of capitalism in his once communist country. The question motivating the war, Kusturica says in a recent interview, was: "who was going to own the capacity of the country? Some big multinational or some domestic crooks?" Religion and ethnic conflict, were, according to Kusturica's view, just the tip of a huge iceberg