Editing Enki Bilal (section)

==Biography==
===Early life===
Bilal was born in [[Belgrade]], [[Socialist Republic of Serbia|PR Serbia]], [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|SFR Yugoslavia]],<ref>[http://www.popboks.com/tekst.php?ID=6130 Život bez formata] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080209013803/http://www.popboks.com/tekst.php?ID=6130 |date=2008-02-09 }};Popboks, December 26, 2007</ref> to a [[Czechs in Serbia|Czech]] mother, Ana, who came to Belgrade as child from [[Karlovy Vary]], and a [[Bosnians|Bosnian]] Muslim father, Muhamed Hamo Bilal, from [[Ljubuški]], who had been [[Josip Broz Tito]]'s tailor. When he was five years old, his father managed to take a trip and stay in [[Paris]] as a political émigré. Enki and the rest of the family, his mother Ana and sister Enisa, stayed in Yugoslavia, and four years later they followed.<ref name=lambiek-bilal>{{Cite web|last=Lambiek Comiclopedia|title=Enki Bilal|url=http://lambiek.net/artists/b/bilal.htm}}</ref><ref name="Sadiković-2013-Bilal">{{cite web |author1=Dr. Halid Sadiković |title=Enki Bilal |url=http://ljubusaci.com/2013/09/12/enki-bilal/ |website=Ljubušaci.com |access-date=4 July 2020 |language=bs |date=12 September 2013}}</ref> Enki Bilal has no sense of belonging to any ethnic group and religion, nor is he obsessed with soil and roots. He said in one interview: "I also feel Bosnian by my father's origin, a Serb by my place of birth and a Croat by my relationship with a certain one to my childhood friends, not to mention my other Czech half, who I am inherited from mother".<ref>{{Cite web|last=Enki Bilal|title=Enki Bilal|url=http://www.ljubusaci.com/2013/09/12/enki-bilal/|date=September 12, 2013}}</ref>

===Education and career===
At age 14, he met [[René Goscinny]] and with his encouragement applied his talent to comics. He produced work for Goscinny's [[Franco-Belgian comics]] magazine ''[[Pilote]]'' in the 1970s, publishing his first story, ''Le Bol Maudit'', in 1972.

In 1975, Bilal began working with script writer [[Pierre Christin]] on a series of dark and surreal tales, resulting in the body of work titled ''Légendes d'Aujourd'hui''.

In 1983, Bilal was asked by film director [[Alain Resnais]] to collaborate on his film ''[[La vie est un roman]]'', for which Bilal provided painted images that were incorporated in the "medieval" episodes of the film.

He is best known for the ''Nikopol'' trilogy (''[[La Foire aux immortels]]'', ''[[La Femme piège]]'' and ''[[Froid Équateur]]''), which took more than a decade to complete. Bilal wrote the script and did the artwork. The final chapter, ''Froid Équateur'', was chosen book of the year by the magazine ''[[Lire (magazine)|Lire]]'' and is acknowledged by the inventor of [[chess boxing]], [[Iepe Rubingh]], as the inspiration for the sport.

''[[Quatre?]]'' (2007), the last book in the ''Hatzfeld'' [[tetralogy]],  deals with the breakup of [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] from a future viewpoint. The first installment came in 1998 in the shape of ''[[Le Sommeil du Monstre]]'' opening with the main character, Nike, remembering the war in a series of traumatic flashbacks. The third chapter of the tetralogy is ''Rendez-vous à Paris'' (2006), which was the fifth best selling new comic of 2006, with 280,000 copies sold.<ref name=TCR>{{cite web|last=Beatty|first=Bart|url=http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/eurocomics/8313/ |title=ACBD Status Report for 2006 |publisher=The Comics Reporter|date=January 3, 2007}}</ref>

His cinematic career was revived with the expensive ''[[Immortel (Ad Vitam)|Immortel]]'', his first attempt to adapt his books to the screen. The film divided critics, some panning the use of CGI characters but others seeing it as a faithful reinterpretation of the books.{{Citation needed|date=May 2023}}

On 13 May 2008 a video game based on the ''Nikopol'' trilogy was announced titled ''Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals''. Published in North America by Got Game Entertainment in August 2008, the game is a "point and click" adventure for the PC; however, the Lead Designer was Marc Rutschlé<ref>{{Cite web |title=Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals credits (Windows, 2008) |url=https://www.mobygames.com/game/36518/nikopol-secrets-of-the-immortals/credits/windows/ |access-date=2024-04-05 |website=MobyGames |language=en}}</ref> and not Bilal himself, who was the art designer, along with [[Yoshitaka Amano]], for the video game ''[[Beyond Good and Evil 2]]''.

In 2012, Bilal was featured in a solo exhibition at [[The Louvre]]. The exhibition, titled "The Ghosts of the Louvre", ran from 20 December 2012 to 18 March 2013. The exhibition was organized by Fabrice Douar, and featured a series of paintings of "Ghosts", done atop photographs that Bilal took of the Louvre's collection.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Louvre Exhibitions|title=The Ghosts of the Louvre, Enki Bilal|url=http://www.louvre.fr/en/expositions/ghosts-louvre-enki-bilal|date=December 20, 2012}}</ref>