Jolie will present her harrowing drama “In the Land of Blood and Honey” out of competition after winning praise in Bosnia for its unflinching take on the brutal 1992-1995 conflict, filmed in local languages with a home-grown cast.

It will screen on the opening weekend of the February 9-19 event, organisers said in a statement.

Thornton, who won a screenwriting Oscar for his own first outing as a feature film director, 1996′s “Sling Blade”, will premiere his latest feature “Jayne Mansfield’s Car” in the competition for the Golden Bear top prize.

The Russian-US co-production, set in the 1960s, is about two clashing families and stars Robert Duvall and Kevin Bacon as well as Thornton, whom Jolie divorced in 2003 after three scandal-tinged years of marriage.

Other entries unveiled Monday include director Alain Gomis’s French-Senegalese production “Aujourd’hui” (Today), German art-house favourite Christian Petzold’s “Barbara” and Italian brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani with “Caesar Must Die”.

German-Norwegian picture “Gnade” (Mercy) by Matthias Glasner and Franco-Swiss drama “Sister” by Ursula Meier starring Lea Seydoux from Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” and Gillian Anderson will also vie for the Golden Bear.

Rounding out the list were German-Greek production “Meteora” about a monk led into temptation by a nun, Portuguese drama “Tabu”, Hungarian feature “Just the Wind” and “Home for the Weekend” by German auteur Hans-Christian Schmid.

The festival, which ranks among the top three European film showcases, announced last week that it would open with a drama set around the French Revolution, “Farewell My Queen”, starring German-born Hollywood actress Diane Kruger as Marie Antoinette.

British director Mike Leigh will chair the jury while two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep will accept an honorary Golden Bear.

Source: AFP

Part 1 of 7

Part 2 of 7

Part 3 of 7

Part 4 of 7

Part 5 of 7

Part 6 of 7

Part 7 of 7

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.

Source: Times of India

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.

Source: MSNBC

The Hollywood star recently unveiled her directorial debut In The Land of Blood and Honey, a romance set in the midst of the Bosnian war. Now Jolie says she wants her next film to tackle an even more modern military conflict.

Though details are scarce, CBS News reports that Jolie confirmed during an interview that she plans to turn her focus on to Afghanistan once Blood and Honey has been released.

Jolie has a history with the troubled country. According to The Playlist, Jolie spent time talking to Afghan refugees back in 2001 as the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees.

The actress visited Afghanistan in 2008 as part of her ongoing dedication to humanitarian causes.

No word yet on the story Jolie plans to tell with her next film, though if Blood and Honey is any indication, it will likely make an effort to humanize the war by focusing on the stories of those most affected.

Jolie tells CBS she’d love to continue directing as she enjoys it more than acting.

“I loved having the spotlight on somebody else,” she says. “And I would much prefer it.”

Much will depend, no doubt, on the response to In The Land of Blood and Honey when it opens in select theatres on December 23 and everywhere later in 2012.

Source: In Movies