Drvengrad, the town of Emir Kusturica
Drvengrad is the reason why the filmmaker has hardly shot fiction since he premiered The life is a miracle in 2004. This wooden micro-city is his great creative prodigy , built in the image and likeness of the scenarios of his remembered comedy.
It takes more than four hours of road travel to travel the scarce 200 kilometers that separate the place from the country's capital. It is situated between the Tara and Zlatibor mountains and it is a tourist miracle for the area, something that the local people do not stop thanking "Professor Kusturica", as they call him there, in a form of superlative respect that becomes disturbing.
What is certain is a marketing genius. That's why calls Drvengrad an 'ethnovillage ', since the cabins that serve as hotel rooms, respect the architecture of the area and they are in themselves a timely reminder of local folklore, after the conflict of identities that the Balkan War entailed.
Interior of one of Drvengrad's log cabins
The Stanley Kubrick cinema, the Visconti restaurant, tennis courts near Fellini street, sauna and indoor swimming pool gravitate around the Orthodox church located in the center of Drvengrad, not far from the Kusturica home and the star monument of Pirates of the Caribbean .
The actor himself went in his day to inaugurate the statue of him. And it is not uncommon to find a movie star in a town bar tasting the local cuisine or drinking Rajjia , the most popular liquor in the country. They have already passed there cinephile idols like Jim Jarmusch, Monica Bellucci, Audrey Tautou, Abel Ferrara or Gael García Bernal, guests during the Küstendorf Film Festival.
The place is small but entertainment is guaranteed, with ski slopes not far from this village, close to one of the stops of the The Sargan Eight , the tourist train whose eight-shaped tracks enter the Natural Park that surrounds the area.
And between film and film, ski
The filmmaker's new urban project is already finished in the Republic of Srpska, Andricgrad . It is a stone city created next to the Drina river bridge, protagonist of the famous novel by the country's only Nobel Prize winner, Ivo Andric . The triangle of thematic cities will close in the coming years with the construction in Bosnia of Kraljevgrad , a medieval town near the Ibar valley.
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Johnny Depp opening his own tribute at the Kustendorf Film Festival
Orthodox church in the center of town, as it should be