In the Land of Blood and Honey

In the Land of Blood and Honey
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Angelina Jolie
Written by	Angelina Jolie
Produced by	Graham King Angelina Jolie Tim Headington Tim Moore
Starring	Goran Kostić Zana Marjanović Rade Šerbedžija
Cinematography	Dean Semler
Edited by	Patricia Rommel
Music by	Gabriel Yared
Production company	GK Films
Distributed by	FilmDistrict (USA) Entertainment Film Distributors (UK)
Release date	December 23, 2011 (2011-12-23) (United States)
Running time	127 minutes
Country	Template:Film US
Languages	Bosnian English
Budget	$13 million
Box office	$277,869 (US-Canada)

In the Land of Blood and Honey is a 2011 American romantic drama film directed by Angelina Jolie and starring Zana Marjanović, Goran Kostić, and Rade Šerbedžija. The film is Jolie's directorial debut and it depicts a love story set against the background of the Bosnian War. It opened in the United States on December 23, 2011 in a limited theatrical release.

Premise

The film is set in Sarajevo against the back drop of the Bosnian War that tore the Balkan region apart in the 1990s. The movie tells the story of Danijel (Goran Kostić), a soldier fighting for the Bosnian Serbs, and Ajla (Zana Marjanović), a Bosniak woman he was involved with before the war, and who is now a captive in the camp he oversees. Danijel is serving under his father, a Bosnian Serb army general, when he comes face to face with Ajla again, who is among a group of women forced to be sex slaves for the Serb soldiers. Although they attempt to rekindle their connection, the pressures of war threatens their once promising love.

Cast

• Goran Kostić - Danijel
• Zana Marjanović - Ajla
• Rade Šerbedžija - Nebojša Vukojević
• Vanessa Glodjo - Lejla
• Nikola Đuričko - Darko
• Branko Đurić - Aleksandar
• Feđa Štukan - Petar
• Alma Terzic - Hana
• Jelena Jovanova - Esma
• Ermin Bravo - Mehmet

Production

Jolie got the idea to write a script of a war-time love story after traveling to Bosnia and Herzegovina as a U.N. goodwill ambassador. During the script-writing phase she consulted with U.S. diplomat and high-ranking Clinton Administration official Richard Holbrooke who was one of the architects of the Dayton Agreement that put an end to the Bosnian War, general Wesley Clark who was the director for strategic plans and policy on the United States Department of Defense's Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war, and foreign correspondent Tom Gjelten. After finishing the screenplay, she secured a production team and financing for the project that was being called "Untitled Bosnian Love Story." When it came down for the production team to chose a director, Jolie realized she herself wanted to direct. When casting calls and auditions were held, her name was deliberately withheld from all aspects of the project. When it was revealed to the cast that Angelina Jolie wrote the script, a number of them expressed pleasant surprise.

In July 2010 with the film already in pre-production, the producers approached the Serbian tycoon and media magnate Željko Mitrović over the usage of the sounds stages and studio sets owned by his Pink International Company's subsidiary Pink Films International in Šimanovci. However, he refused to do business with them, releasing a press statement: "I've held great affection and admiration for Angelina Jolie both as a person and as an artist, but unfortunately she's full of prejudice against the Serbs. I do not wish to be part of something that for the umpteenth time presents the Serbs as eternal bad guys".

Jolie and Brad Pitt on the set of In the Land of Blood and Honey in 2010

The film was shot in Budapest and Esztergom during October and November 2010. The cast were entirely local actors from various parts of former Yugoslavia, many of whom lived through the war. Jolie said she spoke with the cast about their experiences during the war and tried to incorporate them into the film. The film was also shot in two versions – one in English, the other in the local languages.

Jolie explained the reason she wrote and directed the film was to rekindle attention for the survivors of a war that took place in recent history. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour Jolie said she felt a responsibility to learn about the conflict in great detail, adding, "This was, you know, the worst genocide since World War II in Europe ... What were we all doing? And did we do enough? And why do we not speak about this enough?" Responding to claims that her film was not balanced, she stated that "The war was not balanced. I can't understand people who are looking for a balance that did not exist. There are some people who don't want to be reminded of these things, some even who deny that these things even happened. Those people are going to be angry."

During the shooting of the film, it was falsely reported that the story was about a Bosnian woman falling in love with her Serbian rapist, prompting protests from the Bosnian Women Victims of War association and the revocation of the filming permit. Jolie denied the rumors and presented the script to Bosnia's ministry of culture, which then quickly reinstated the permit.

Plagiarism suit

In September 2011, Bosnian Croat author Josip Knežević aka James J. Braddock accused Jolie of plagiarizing his story Slamanje duše (The Soul Shattering), which was published in December 2007. He claimed to have made repeated attempts to contact the film's producers during the production phase, but they ignored him. He then announced his intention to sue Jolie. On 2 December 2011 he filed a lawsuit against Jolie, GK Films, FilmDistrict, Scout Film (production company based in Bosnia), and producer Edin Šarkić before the U.S. District Court in Chicago that has jurisdiction over Northern Illinois.

Asked to comment during an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Jolie dismissed Knežević's claims by saying: "It's par for the course. It happens on almost every film. There are many books and documentaries that I did pull from such as work by journalists Peter Maas and Tom Gjelten. It's a combination of many people's stories. But that particular book I've never seen".

Reaction

Jolie speaks to the Voice of America about the film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Film writers expressed mixed feelings after viewing a trailer for the film. Journalist Christiane Amanpour, who covered the Bosnian War for CNN, introduced the film at the New York premiere on 5 December 2011, calling it "remarkable and courageous". The premiere after-party was held at The Standard hotel's rooftop in New York and was co-sponsored by the US foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations (of which Angelina Jolie is a member) and women's rights organization Women for Women International. General Wesley Clark was also on hand at the premiere and called the film "incredible."

Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Richard Cohen praised the movie, seeing it as an indictment of the hesitant American reaction to the atrocities committed by Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia as well as an endorsement of American-led foreign interventionism such as the military action in Libya.

After the film was shown to locals in a special screening in Sarajevo, Murat Tahirović, the head of association of prisoners of war, stated that Jolie "really succeeded in telling the story of the whole war in her film and to show the most characteristic situations that detainees faced — mass executions, rapes, (being used as) human shields and all the other horrors." The head of an association of mothers of Srebrenica massacre victims Hatidza Mehmedović–who had earlier spoken out against Jolie after the media rumours regarding the film—said the final product was "really an excellent movie," "objective and sincere," and wanted to "thank Angelina for her intellectual and financial investment."

Critical reception

The film has generally received mixed reviews. Based on sixty nine reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 55% of critics gave In the Land of Blood and Honey a positive review, with an average rating of 5.9/10. Among the "Top Critics", consisting of popular and notable critics from the top English-language newspapers, websites, television and radio programs, the film holds an overall approval rating of 52%, based on thirty one reviews.

United States

Though feeling In the Land of Blood and Honey "has you dreading to learn what atrocity awaits around the next corner", The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy also thinks Jolie "deserves significant credit for creating a powerfully oppressive atmosphere and staging the ghastly events so credibly".

Variety's Justin Chang penned a negative review of the movie, labeling it a "dramatically misguided attempt to renew public awareness of the 1992-95 Balkan conflict" that "springs less from artistic conviction than from an over-earnest humanitarian impulse". He didn't like the way the movie "almost seems to sense its scenario tilting into tarted-up banality and abruptly shifts gears, to shockingly blunt effect" and criticized the actors for being a bit colorless, especially Marjanović and Kostić who "don't seem entirely at home with their characters' fairly risible dynamic".

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times has some issues with the way certain characters' dialogues are used as "short history lesson on the region that's clearly meant for the benefit of those watching the movie", but for the most part feels the movie "moves briskly and easily holds your attention, largely through a perverse love story that doesn't suffer for being such an obvious metaphor for the larger battle raging beyond Ajla and Danijel's relationship".

Associated Press writer Jake Coyle wrote a negative review in which he gives Jolie some credit for "using her celebrity to bring attention to the dangers of pacifism in the face of war crimes and ethnic cleansing", but criticizes her for "a heavy-handed touch" as well as for "putting politics ahead of story and character, thus blatantly imposing a message, which results in a movie whose narrative feels like a fictionalized United Nations presentation". He also has problems with the way the story is told — from "not enough context given to the overall conflict", over to "the love story that feels increasingly myopic as the war drags on and the film's ambitions broaden", and finally the way the film "makes its case only in the illustration of extreme, intolerable violence instead of finding a way to dramatize international inaction".

Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News sees the biggest accomplishment of In the Land of Blood and Honey to be "the way it never loses sight of the closeness of the combatants, turning national intimacy into a tragic casualty". He goes on to commend the actors for "their commitment that helps us through a movie that is often harrowing, never less than intense but important, one unafraid of moments too many have chosen to forget".

According to Los Angeles Times resident critic Kenneth Turan Jolie accomplished something that is both impressive and unexpected. The Ajla/Danijel relationship is not always convincing, key plot points can feel contrived and the preponderance of Bosnian Serb bad guys comes off as schematic". He further points out Lu Chuan's film City of Life and Death as an example of "how far In the Land of Blood and Honey needs to travel". He writes that Jolie has accomplished a great deal in a difficult area. "She has done her homework about the conflict's disturbing, unflinching atrocities as well as the rationales the Bosnian Serbs used for their actions.

The Village Voice's Karina Longworth's review is particularly negative. She dismisses the movie as "a United Nations extra-credit project about the Bosnian War" and criticizes Jolie for "producing a sanctimonious vanity commercial for her own good intentions".

Nathan Rabin of the A.V. Club refers to In the Land of Blood and Honey as "a film of shuddering earnestness and fevered good intentions gone awry, a dreary slog of a message movie with little but noble if unfulfilled aspirations to commend it". He continues by opining that "Serbian groups have justifiably complained about Jolie’s glib stereotyping of Serbs as racist heavies" before concluding that "Jolie has, after disastrously received 2003 message movie Beyond Borders, once again succeeded in attracting international attention to international atrocities and it's possible, if not particularly likely, that someday she will get around to dramatizing atrocities compellingly as well".

Europe

Screen International's Howard Feinstein commended Jolie for "attempting to rectify the gross injustices perpetrated against the Muslims that were tolerated in the name of a mythological Greater Serbia, masterminded by Slobodan Milošević", while reproaching her for "going beyond acceptable dramatic license and presenting the Serbs as caricatures". He furthermore has issues with her script "that often misses the boat" and its "over- and under-drawn characters".

In the Dutch daily De Volkskrant, Bor Beekman slated In the Land of Blood and Honey as "messy, unnatural war porno" and gave the movie one star out of five. Beekman regarded the plot as rambling, and replete with implausible developments. Most objectionable was the unnatural dialogue, which rubs in the meaning of war dillemmas some more, as if they were not already made obvious (in scenes of gruesome cruelty). Typifying is the scene where Ajla, the Bosnian Muslim, hides behind a corpse during a solitary escape through the forest. The scene is completely gratuitous, but it supplies Jolie with a compelling visual image. "However well-intentioned, it is war porno".

Awards

Ceremony	Category	Nominee	Result
23rd PGA Awards	Stanley Kramer Award		Won
69th Golden Globe Awards	Best Foreign Language film		Nominated
43rd NAACP Image Awards	Outstanding Foreign Motion Picture		Won
	Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture	Angelina Jolie	Nominated

External links

• Official website
• In the Land of Blood and Honey at IMDb