Bosnian writer and poet Abdulah Sidran, who screenwrote a Cannes-winning movie by Serbian director Emir Kusturica, has died in Sarajevo, aged 79, native media reported at the weekend.
Sidran, who died late on Saturday, penned the script for Kusturica’s When Father Was Away On Business, which received the Palme d’Or prize at Cannes in 1985.
He additionally co-wrote Kusturica’s 1981 film Do You Remember Dolly Bell?.
Born in Sarajevo in 1944, Sidran began publishing literary works, notably poetry, within the Nineteen Sixties.
He was an outspoken critic of the forces which have repeatedly torn the Balkans aside, together with his native Sarajevo.
“Persecution alongside political strains in a single era … is transmitted to the subsequent generations,” Sidran mentioned in an 2011 interview with an area TV station.
“It’s the curse of the Balkans, the curse of our destinies that right here … the previous is ‘hotter’ than the current.”
Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karic paid tribute to Sidran, saying on Facebook: “We will bear in mind you without end, on your testimony in regards to the magnificence, the soul and delight of the Bosnian man, in regards to the values that make one a human.”
Sidran had suffered critical well being points over the previous yr, main him to withdraw from public and talk solely sometimes by way of social media.
He was a member of the Bosnian academy of sciences and humanities (ANUBiH) and obtained a collection of nationwide and worldwide literary accolades.
They embrace France’s PEN centre Freedom Award for his guide of poetry Sarajevo Coffin (“Sarajevski Tabut” in Bosnian), revealed in the course of the nation’s 1991-1995 conflict. – AFP
