In the Land of Blood and Honey

In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011)

Love can change what we want… war can change who we are

During the Bosnian War, Danijel, a soldier fighting for the Serbs, re-encounters Ajla, a Bosnian who's now a captive in his camp he oversees. Their once promising connection has become ambiguous as their motives have changed.

Date of release
2011-12-22
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (158)
Runtime
2h 7m
Genres
Drama, Romance, War
Director
Angelina Jolie

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: Producers Guild Stanley Kramer Award

In the Land of Blood and Honey is a 2011 war drama film written, produced, and directed by Angelina Jolie, and starring Zana Marjanović, Goran Kostić and Rade Šerbedžija. The film, Jolie's first commercial release as a director, 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.

Production

Jolie got the idea to write a script of a wartime love story after traveling to Bosnia and Herzegovina as a U.N. goodwill ambassador. While writing the script she consulted with Richard Holbrooke, a U.S. diplomat and high-ranking Clinton administration official 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 Dep…

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 sound stages and studio sets owned by his Pink International Company's subsidiary Pink Films International in Šimanovci.

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 Serbo-Croatian.

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 ...

During production, 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 and Herzegovina's Ministry of Culture, which then quickly reinstated the permit.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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