Enki Bilal

Enki Bilal is one of the most important Europeans in the world of science fiction comics. Taking the claustrophobia he needed from Kafka and the unwholesome morbidity he wanted from Lovecraft, Bilal created a political literature of the fantastic in comic form. Usually set in the future in dark twilit worlds, his work features eccentric heroes, curt dialogue and the trademark well-worked images that won him a Pilote prize at the tender age of 20 and brought him into contact with René Goscinny.

That Cold Equator was judged the best book of 1993 across the board by “Lire” magazine is indicative of the reception his work has received. Another of his innumerable triumphs is the now legendary album “The hunting party” (1983), one of his celebrated collaborations with the writer Pierre Christin.

He took first prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 1987, worked on the graphics for Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film “The Name of the Rose” (based on the novel by Umberto Eco), staged an exhibition in Tokyo with the photographer Josef Koudelka in 1988, and created sets and costumes for a production of Prokofiev’s ballet, “Romeo and Juliette”.

Of course, he has also directed a number of successful films: “Bunker Palace Hotel” with Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Carole Bouquet (1989); “Tykho Moon”, which he wrote in collaboration with Dan Frank, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Michel Piccoli and Julie Delpy (1996); and “Immortel”, which once again starred Jean-Louis Trintignant, this time alongside Charlotte Rampling (2004).

Enki Bilal was born in Belgrade in 1951 to a Bosnian father and a Czech mother. Having moved to Paris with his parents at the age of nine, he is convinced that the French texts he read as a teenager, and the French language itself, have influenced his drawing style.

Enki Bilal will be talking about all the above at the Onassis Stegi with the journalist and author Yorgos Archimandritis, a regular contributor to the French quality media, in a discussion encompassing comics, the cinema, politics, the ecological aspect of his work, people he has worked with, and the Balkans—the echoes of constant fighting, the “History that grabbed him”, as he once said, when he was still just a boy.