Enki (diminutive of Enes) Bilal is born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on October 7 1951, six years after the end of the war, with a Yougoslav father and a Czech mother, his father being the former tailor of Marshal Tito. He spends ten years of his life in Belgrade before exiling with his parents in France, in Paris.
In 1971, he enters Pilote for illustrations (caricatures of politicians). He will there meet Christin, with whom he will collaborate many years for strips which will be enormous success like Les Phallanges de l'Ordre Noir, then it is in solo that he will affirm his style with albums like La femme piège, La Foire aux Immortels and Froid Equateur (better book of year 1993 by magazine LIRE, all genre confused, a first in the history of comic strip).
Then Enki Bilal directs his first film, Bunker palace hotel, in 1989 with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Carole Bouquet. It seems clear that Emir Kusturica saw this film, and that it marked (influenced ?) him for the esthetics and the topics of Underground. In both films indeed, some people are kept in an underground cellar without possibility of leaving, without news of the external world, besides those which are given by an obscure manipulator...
1997. Release of Bilal's second film : Tykho moon, co-written by Dan Frank. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays again, accompanied by Julie Delpy, Joseph Leysen, Michel Picolli and Richard Bohringer.
Among his collaborations to the cinema, we can also mention his work on the set of Life is a bed of roses by Alain Resnais, and The name of the Rose by Jean-Jacques Annaud.
Decembre 32nd, following The Dormant Beast is just released. These two albums occur in an close future, with themes such as religious obscurantism, modern art, human cloning and always in bond with ex-Yugoslavia. The history is sumptuous and complex, and one can say that Enki put his own portrait on Nike (anagram of Enki) Hatzfeld, born in Sarajevo during the bombardments from his city in 1993.
On March 24th, Enki Bilal releases his third full-length film : Immortel (ad vitam), based on the Nikopol trilogy, mixing synthesized images, real actors and mate-paintings. The film is incredible, and at least the technique allowed Enki to put all his universe on a 35 mm film. Immortal (ad vitam) can be ordered on Amazon.fr as a collector double DVD edition.
Enki Bilal books available on Amazon.com :
A mini-site of Enki Bilal on fnac.net (in French) : www.fnac.net/bilal