Enki Bilal

Enki Bilal, the son of a Czech mother and a Bosnian father, spent the first nine years of his life in Belgrade, where the ghost of World War II still haunted everyday life. The Bilal family moved to Paris in 1961, where Enki Bilal was drawn to comics and cinema. He started at Pilote in 1972, making illustrations, covers and short stories. Three years later, Bilal met writer Pierre Christin, with whom he created several comics by combining comic strips with photos, including 'Légendes d'Aujourd'hui', 'La Croisière des Oubliés' and 'Partie de Chasse'.

In 1980 he began his award-winning 'Nikopol-trilogy'. Besides these comics activities, Enki Bilal started working in film, theater and opera. He created sets, costumes and posters for a theater play and worked on two feature films. Apart from these and other occupations, like photo retouching and glass painting, Bilal published 'Froid Equateur', 'Bleu Sang' and 'Le Sommeil du Monstre' in the 1990s.

Bilal's stories are set in a magically orientated but realistic future after the Yugoslavian civil wars, giving Bilal the perfect setting against which to illustrate his fears. He further reinforces his views by his dark and shadowy style of drawing, in which color features largely for evoking emotions. The result of Enki Bilal's efforts is a growing catalog of intense and atmospheric graphic novels.