Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut – a controversial movie set in wartime Bosnia – has a name and a release date.
‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’ will be released in the United States on December 23, producers said in a statement on Monday, just in time for Oscar consideration.
“The film is specific to the Bosnian War, but it’s also universal,” Jolie said in a statement. “I wanted to tell a story of how human relationships and behavior are deeply affected by living inside a war.” Jolie, who also wrote the screenplay, last year described the then untitled movie as a love story between a Serbian man and a Bosnian woman on the eve of the 1992-95 Balkans conflict, in which 100,000 people died.
But it caused controversy in Bosnia with some female victims of sexual violence objecting to details in the plot and Bosnian authorities canceling a filming permit. As a result, some scenes scheduled to be shot in Sarajevo were moved to Budapest, Hungary. Jolie, who won a supporting actress Oscar for ‘Girl, Interrupted,’ and who is a UN goodwill ambassador, has asked the people of Bosnia to withhold judgment until they see the completed film.
‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’ features a local cast, and was shot in both the English and Serbo-Croat languages. Producers Graham King and Tim Headington on Monday called it a “bold new film which illustrates the consequences of the lack of political will to intervene in a society stricken with conflict.”
