Miljen "Kreka" Kljakovic, Dune Production Designer

With a background in fine art and a respected and eclectic film repertoire, production designer Miljen "Kreka" Kljakovic brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to Dune.

Kreka's production design on Underground, an exotic Yugoslav movie--for which Kreka built an entire island--helped net the movie a Cannes Film Festival award for best film. Kreka also won CÈsar Awards for Indochine and the French sensation, Delicatessen. Kreka has designed other films including HBO's Rasputin, for which he received an Emmy nomination, Species II, The Brave, and Crow: The Salvation.

Kreka studied fine arts at Belgrade College and currently resides in Paris.

Kreka's designs for Dune enraptured both cast and crew, and helped writer/director John Harrison create the look he sought for the Dune universe.

"Kreka has come up with architectural design which basically in a glance tells you the difference between the Harkonnen and the Atreides, between the palace of the Imperial Emperor Shaddam, and the Fremen communities in the deep desert. I was determined when we did Dune to enrich the story by the cultural life of these different communities, and the first way of doing that was with the architecture. So we have a very stylized look to this movie which gives you an immediate sense of where you are," Harrison said.

The Imperial Palace, for example, is a regal, eye-candy piece of architecture with a dash of Art Nouveau and a lot of Kreka's fertile imagination. Julie Cox, playing Princess Irulan, commented on Kreka's designs: "In your mind as an actress, you're always imagining places like this. And when you come to work on something this beautiful, it can only make you feel like you really are that character," Cox said. "It's inspiring. And it's exactly how I imagined all these places to be."