In a book that reads like a novel of the Balkans in the twenty-first century, the great Serbian filmmaker narrates, perhaps for the first and only time, his life, vividly bringing to life before our eyes, with a power that echoes and rivals the strength of his cinematic gaze, an entire world marked by war and history.

“On the steep slopes of Gorica, where my childhood friends lived, dramatic events followed one another in quick succession. A new kind of war began. In my Sarajevo, in my Gorica that I knew stone by stone. At the top of the hill, my sighs flutter like night butterflies, while on the steep stairs, where I practiced the speed of a cosmonaut and the slowness of a lover, balls roll incessantly. And I never stopped running after them…”

“This baroque mosaic is his autobiography, as wonderfully Balkan as its title...” “Le Figaro”

“In my life, I have gone through all the dramas we find in great novels, Kusturica tells us in this autobiography that tenderly and deeply describes his journey from his childhood in Sarajevo to the two Palme d'Ors in Cannes. Far from the image of success and luxury, his testimony is that of a tender and rebellious man. The war that swept through Yugoslavia is ever-present…” (“L' Expansion”)

“For this controversial rebel, the poet of images who conveys the shocks of his homeland in his films, with both exaggeration and pure emotion, everything is political. And the Balkans are its tragic field…” (“Le Journal du Dimanche”)