Enki Bilal was born in the former Yugoslavia in 1951, and moved to France aged 10. At age 14, he met Rene Goscinny, and began to focus his attention on a serious career in comics, starting with strips in Pilote magazine. The Nikopol Trilogy took over a decade to finally complete, and has been released as both a videogame, called Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals and a film, directed by Bilal, called Immortal, starring Charlotte Rampling.