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Angelina Jolie woos critics with debut film
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CBC News
The film, which opens in theatres in Canada and the U.S. Dec. 23, is set against the Bosnian War that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the early '90s. The story follows the relationship between a Bosnian Muslim woman and a Serb army officer. Acquainted before the conflict begins, they meet again at a notorious internment camp where she is held captive.
The film has drawn criticism from victims' groups who believed the story is about a woman who fell in love with her rapist, a lawsuit from a writer who says Jolie stole his book and scoffs from critics who wonder what one of the world’s most bankable stars is doing behind the camera.
At a New York screening on Monday, Jolie appeared every bit the serious director and spoke of how her role as a UN goodwill ambassador fed her desire to make the film.
"I was going through a period where I was thinking a lot about my 10 years travelling into these situations and all the people I met who had gone through conflict and how their lives were affected," she said.
"I chose Bosnia because I had been through the area and was very drawn to the region. I just felt I should know more and there should be a discussion."
At a subsequent screening in Los Angeles Thursday, Jolie held hands with partner Brad Pitt and hugged her father, actor Jon Voight, in an apparent reunion after years of estrangement.
This helped win over the Hollywood media, who made much of her appearance with Voight. She had pushed him out of her life after he criticized her as self-destructive in a 2002 interview.
The savvy star also organized a private screening of In the Land of Blood and Honey in Sarajevo Thursday for representatives of victims' associations.
According to a report from Reuters, they left praising the film for its portrayal of their suffering during the 1992-95 war.
"She has made a fantastic film for Bosnia and Herzegovina, I can really say that from the angle of a victim," Murat Tahirovic, president of Bosnia's association of (wartime) detainees, told Federal Television in Sarajevo.
Jolie, who received an award at a festival in Sarajevo earlier this year, she is careful to credit her Bosnian cast and speak of war victims at each appearance, emphasizing how much input they had into the film.
"It’s not an American film made about Bosnia. It’s a film made with one American and many Bosnians and many people from the area, and we made it together," she said in New York.
In the Land of Blood and Honey has two versions: one in English, the other in the Bosnian language.
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