Last we heard from Emir Kusturica, the acclaimed Serbian director of “Underground,” “When Father Was Away On Business,” and “Life Is A Miracle,” he was planning a feature starring himself and Monica Bellucci. That was in May, but the word was that he was ready to get moving on production. Now, we hear news of his next project. It will start filming in December in the U.S., and while Kusturica’s there, he’s also scheduled to meet with Barack Obama. Kusturica is very interesting indeed. Did we mention he lives in a recreated medieval Serbian town that he built himself?
Anyway, this next project is slated to be about someone arguably even more interesting: Jose “Pepe” Mujica, the current president of Uruguay. If you’ve not been keeping up with Uruguayan politics, we’ll let you off this one time, but really, you should be. Mujica is an ex-guerilla who lives on a ramshackle farm outside Montevideo (a city equipped with a very nice presidential palace that Mujica politely turned down) and gives 90% of his salary to charity. In government, he has worked on a program of massive social liberalization, legalizing gay marriage, pushing for abortion rights and becoming the first country on the planet to fully decriminalize marijuana.
It’s going to be fascinating to see what Kusturica makes of him, and what the documentary will deal with. We’ll keep you posted. [THR]
