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.

He started producing his own short films in 2012 and completed his first horror feature, Veronika, in 2014. He followed that with a short horror titled Man That You Fear.

He lives in Buffalo, New York, with his wife Nicole and their two dogs and two cats. He attended University at Buffalo.