Interview: Award-winning filmmaker Kusturica displays tender, sad love story at wartime

"The most difficult thing is to be somebody who observes and who is observed, that is why I'm now a greater fun of Charlie Chaplin and others masters like him," said Serbian film director Emir Kusturica during the Venice Film Festival.

"I don't understand how they did all these movies being on both sides transcending all the time and being able to measure what I did as an actor," Kusturica told Xinhua in an interview on his film On the Milky Road presented in competition at the film festival.

The Serbian director won twice the Golden Palm prize of the Cannes Film Festival, once in 1985 for the film of When Father Was Away on Business, and the second time in 1995 for Underground.

Kusturica stressed he always risked in his career, saying, "every film I risked to lose everything in my life and I bring everybody in my crew at the brink of existence. Then I made ten film with a big crew and just few people left me before the end because when people see someone exhausting and sacrificing himself for the good of the movie, they follow you to achieve the best result possible."

For the Serbian director, On the Milky Road is a women's film because it showed the power women have while men are just from time to time assisting them in the way to achieve things. "Finally with all my movies I glorified women," he stressed.

Asked about the very physical performance of his main actress the director said, "Monica (Bellucci) was diving for the first time then she was jumping 20 meters in the waterfall scene, she did an incredible achievement in this film after which the American press called her undestroyable Monica."

Regarding the script, Kusturica explained, "it has to be destroyed, it is just a sign on the map giving the direction but it doesn't give the ultimate quality while the shooting process is the part where you have the chance to create the movie. After that, I build the set and then if I recognize it is not good I destroy it."

According to Kusturica, editing is a process you start on the set, and there is an American way that you can cover the actions from five angles with five cameras and then you create the movie in the editing room.

"I oppose this because I think that the architecture of the movie is based on your ideas so you edit the movie while you are shooting it. I strongly believe that films are made together as 'obsessive image of the world' in your head and on the set," he said.

Other important elements are animals and nature which are the directors' main determination. "I'm recognizable by my love to nature and animals... we are social animals and the instincts we exchange with animals are the key elements," he said.

The director enjoyed interacting with animals, saying "the bear was really eating oranges from my mouth, it was not CGI, then on set there was a small very dangerous snake, I don't tell you I'm brave, but I was understanding that animal by keeping it from the tail and playing with it."

Talking about the war elements in the film, the director said he was trying to have an echo of the war and not to show the hero who is fighting.

"My 'hero' is unbeatable smuggling milk back to the soldiers and I found it even symbolic as the milk is a kind of holly element," he added. Endit