Study of war inspired Jolie film
Angelina Jolie is as known for her humanitarian work as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations as she is for being an award-winning actress and the prettier half of Hollywood's most famous power couple, the other half being handsome Brad Pitt.
Over the years, she has visited worn-torn countries in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. Her goal is to use her celebrity to generate awareness about issues of poverty, disease and the unspoken cost of war.
Moved by what she has seen, Jolie decided as an exercise to write about a devastating conflict she had only heard about during her travels: the Bosnian War. That little "homework assignment," as she calls it, led her to write, produce and direct her first feature film, "In the Land of Blood and Honey." It's a love story set during the bloody and complicated ethnic conflict from 1992-95 that cost 100,000 lives and displaced nearly 2 million people.
"I sat down to write a project where I could meditate and study what happens to human beings through war to better understand people in post-conflict situations," the actress-filmmaker explains. "It gave me purpose to watch documentaries, read books, research and watch news footage, visit the region and spend time with people who went through it. I never thought this was going to be a film. Then somehow it ended up evolving into a film."
"In the Land of Blood and Honey" tells the story of the war through the eyes of a Bosnian Muslim woman named Ajla whose life is forever changed by the conflict. One night while on a date at a nightclub with Danijel, a Serbian, a bomb goes off, killing and wounding several patrons. She and Danijel are separated in the chaos following the blast. Months later, the war between the Orthodox Christian Serbians and the Muslim Bosnians is well under way, with all sides suffering casualties. Ajla is rounded up with other Muslim Bosnian women and taken to a Serbian camp where prisoners work long hours cleaning and cooking for the soldiers.
To make the story as fair and accurate as possible, Jolie sent the script anonymously to filmmakers and actors in that country.
She also spoke with ordinary citizens who had lived through the war. One woman told her how at one encampment, old women were forced to strip down naked and dance in front of the soldiers, who laughed at them. Jolie incorporated a scene depicting that horrible humiliation in her film.
Jolie hired Bosnian and Serbian actors, many of whom had lived through or had been displaced by the war.
Zana Marjanovic, a Bosnian who plays Ajla in the film, was a child during the war and lived in exile in New York with her mother while her father was trapped in Sarajevo. Co-star Goran Kostic, like his character Danijel, is Serbian and hailed from a Serbian military family, but chose acting instead.
They agree Jolie wrote a balanced story and was a capable director, in tune with their needs as performers.
"She directed as she would like to be directed," says Marjanovic, 28.
Kostic, who has had minor roles in other Hollywood films, including "Taken" and "The Hunting Party," says Jolie had a distinct and unique viewpoint of the war from a female perspective.
He also says she had a clear understanding of the conflict, almost like someone who had been there.
"She possesses simplicity," he compliments. "She's one of us."
As if shooting her first feature — and a war film to boot — wasn't challenging enough, Jolie decided to up the ante by having the actors speak the dialogue in their native languages.
They also shot a version in English, which will be seen in the UK. Owing to instability in Bosnia and Herzegovina, most of the film was shot in nearby Hungary.
The first person to whom Jolie showed her script was Pitt, her partner and father of their six children.
"He said it was pretty good," she says with a smile. "We talked further about it, and he encouraged me throughout the whole process.
"If he would have said anything negative, we wouldn't be here talking about this today."
Study of war inspired Jolie film
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