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Can Angelina Jolie get people to see one of her movies if she isn’t actually in it? Jolie’s feature film debut as a director, In the Land of Blood and Honey, will reveal whether the world’s most famous movie star has as much command over the screen behind the camera as she does in front of it. But despite the fact that Jolie doesn’t appear in the film, it’s very much her vision. She came up with the story and wrote the script, and the subject, the Bosnian war that devastated the Balkans in the ’90s, is something of an extension of her efforts as a U.N. goodwill ambassador, for which she has participated in dozens of humanitarian missions in such ragged places as Afghanistan and Namibia to advocate on behalf of refugees.
In the Land of Blood and Honey unflinchingly depicts all the brutality and horrors of the years of armed conflict, ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and a population under endless siege. Framed within that chaos is the story of Danijel (Goran Kostic) and Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), who had a relationship before the war and now find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. The cast of unknowns, including Kostic and Marjanovic, many of whom experienced the war as young people, may not add Hollywood star power to the project, but they lend the film something perhaps of greater value: authenticity. Jolie felt a responsibility to get their story right, and wants the film, regardless of its critical reception, to serve as a conversation restarter about Bosnia, and, implicitly, to get people to think of that war against the relative successes and failures of other, more recent American interventions abroad.
Taking on a hot-button political topic has not been without its risks, even for someone with Jolie’s connections. Permission to shoot in Sarajevo in fall 2010 was briefly denied after the Bosnian group Women Victims of War claimed that the plot depicted a Bosnian female prisoner falling in love with the man who tortured her-a situation deemed unthinkable and distressing to survivors. After Bosnian officials read the script, the crew was allowed to shoot in the country’s capital, though most of the action was filmed in Hungary, where Jolie, 36, has spent much of the past year. She was in Budapest, where partner Brad Pitt was filming his zombie flick World War Z, when she spoke with Clint Eastwood, a filmmaker who is no stranger to the cinema of violence and tragedy. He directed Jolie in Changeling (2008), and the two hope to collaborate again someday. Read the rest of this entry…
The Producers Guild of America has tapped Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut “In the Land of Blood and Hopney” to receive the 2012 Stanley Kramer Award.
The kudo will be awarded at the 23rd Annual Producers Guild Awards ceremony on Jan. 21 at the Beverly Hilton.
The Kramer award was established in 2002 to honor films or individuals that illuminate “provocative social issues in an accessible and elevating fashion.” Kramer’s films include “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?,” “High Noon,” “The Caine Mutiny and “The Defiant Ones.”
Previous recipients of the Kramer award include “The Great Debaters,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Hotel Rwanda,” “In America” and “Antwone Fisher.” Sean Penn is the most recent recipient for his relief work in Haiti and the first individual to receive the award.
“‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’ is an extraordinary film that portrays a complex love story set against the terrors of the Bosnian War, especially towards women,” said PGA presidents Hawk Koch and Mark Gordon. “This film truly embraces the legacy of Stanley Kramer.”
Producers are Tim Headington, Jolie, Graham King and Tim Moore. Set against the backdrop of the Bosnian War that tore the Balkan region apart in the 1990s, the pic tells the story of a soldier fighting for the Serbs and a Bosnian held captive in the camp he oversees.
The film stars Zana Marjanovic, Goran Kostic, Rade Serbedzija, Vanesa Glodjo and Nikola Djuricko, and is executive produced by Holly Goline with associate producer Simon Crane.
Angelina Jolie has revealed that she felt uncomfortable asking her actors to bare all and pretend getting intimate while directing her latest movie ‘The Land Of Blood and Honey’.
The actress, who is making her directorial debut with the movie admitted that her stars Zana Marjanovic and Goran Kostic, helped her with the sex scene, because they were willing to go further for the sake of the film.
“I believe it was Zana’s first love scene and Goran is a family man with a wife and kids. You kind of suddenly feel this strange thing of asking people to participate in anything like that because they’re not a real couple,” Contactmusic quoted her as telling USA Today newspaper.
“You find out how strange this is to ask anybody to get naked together and put a camera on them.
“They actually made me more comfortable. I was being a lot more prudish.
” I would have allowed them to be more prudish and they told me it was all right and important for the story. They wanted to do what they wanted to do and they were comfortable,” she said.
However, the 36-year-old was still extra vigilant and ensured that the love scenes were shot carefully, since she herself has “felt misrepresented” in previous movies where she had stripped off.
“You feel, ‘Why did they hold on to that and why did they feel they needed to do that?’” she said.
She also confessed to be mesmerised by the body of her leading lady.
“She has a very beautiful body that is very organic in that European sense. She is a real woman and a beautiful woman,” she added.
Victims of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war had most of their anxieties over a film by Hollywood star Angelina Jolie put to rest at a private screening this week.
Objections to filming Jolie’s tale of love between a Serb man and a Muslim woman in Bosnia last year forced the Hollywood star to shoot most of the film in nearby Hungary. Only some of the exterior scenes were shot in Bosnia.
But the Thursday night screening of the film in Sarajevo to representatives of victims’ associations elicited positive reactions from some of Jolie’s toughest local critics.
“She has made a fantastic film for Bosnia and Herzegovina, I can really say that from the angle of a victim,” Murat Tahirovic, the president of Bosnia’s association of (wartime) detainees, told the Federal Television in Sarajevo.
Tahirovic was among a dozen representatives of wartime victims invited to the closed screening of Jolie’s directorial debut “In The Land of Blood and Honey”.
“Everybody should see this film,” Tahirovic said.
In October 2010, a Bosnian minister cancelled Jolie’s filming permits citing incomplete paperwork, after female victims of the Bosnian war objected to details of the plot, alleging it was about love between a rapist and his victim.
The film tells a tale of love between a Serb man and a Muslim woman before the Bosnian war, who later meet in different circumstances – he is an army officer and she is his detainee.
Victims of sexual violence in Bosnia wrote to the United Nations refugee agency, saying Jolie did not deserve her role as a UNHCR Good Will Ambassador, and did not know enough about the Bosnian conflict.
Jolie first came to Bosnia last year as an UNHCR ambassador.
She filmed most of the feature in Budapest but asked war victims voicing their objections to the movie to reserve judgment until they had seen the finished product.
Story: Angelina Jolie declares ‘I’m still a bad girl’
One of the loudest opponents to Jolie filming in Bosnia said she was now satisfied by the film’s portrayal of the war.
“Two hours of film is not enough time to show all (the horrors of the war), but I think Angelina managed to do it,” said Sadzida Hadzic of the Women-Victims of War association.
However, Hatidza Mehmedovic, who lost her husband and two teenage sons in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys, said she was disappointed the film was shot elsewhere, even though she congratulated Jolie.
“The film is so strong, so difficult, it would be stronger if it was shot in Bosnia,” she told Reuters.
The closed screening was organised by the Center for post-conflict research, and was not open to media.
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