Last year at the Cannes Film Festival, the Sarajevo-born director Emir Kusturica was taking questions from the press about his new movie. He was discussing the sorts of things he likes to discuss: why the cinema he loves is being ruined by an inhuman, mass-produced fast food coming out of Hollywood, for instance. Until, inevitably, he was visited with a mild version of the question reporters have never failed to ask him over the last decade: During the wars that destroyed Yugoslavia in the 1990's, why didn't he come out publicly against Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who was ravaging his homeland? Dan Halpern profiles the director in the New York Times (free subscription required to view).