New Kusturica film looks to Dostoevsky for inspiration

Serbian director Emir Kusturica has announced that his new film about human organ trafficking will be mostly shot in Russia and incorporate the ideas of Russian literary giant Fyodor Dostoevsky. Kusturica will spend the next three years making the film, which is based on a novel he is writing called My Dear Fedor. The film will follow a Serbian man who like the protagonist in Crime and Punishment experiences a moral dilemma, which takes him to Kosovo via St Petersburg.

The cult film director, who has twice won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, said he decided to focus on human organ trafficking because it is “one of the biggest issues in this century”. In a 2010 report, Dick Marty, then human rights rapporteur at the Council of Europe, alleged that members of the Kosovo Liberation Army had trafficked the organs of prisoners during the armed conflict in late Nineties. An investigation by the EU Special Investigative Task Force was launched in 2011 but is yet to press any charges.