Emir Skalonja was born on august 30th, 1987, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (then Yugoslavia). He moved to United States in 2002. His first film was in 1992, titled Psalm where he played the main character, named Slavko. It was a short film based on a short story by Mikhaila Bulgakova, about a boy's relationship to his neighbor at the start of a war.