February 17, 2012 — BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — The distributor in Serbia of Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut — a love story set in the Bosnian war — said Friday the movie will start showing here next week, but without the red-carpet premiere it had in Bosnia.
Zoran Savic of Millennium Film said “the movie will be shown normally, so whoever wants to see it will have a chance to do so.” Jolie’s “In the Land of Blood and Honey” has triggered outrage among Serbs, who claim it depicts them as the only villains of the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
The drama about a Serb soldier who finds his ex-lover, a Muslim Bosnian woman, among sex slaves in a camp, received a standing ovation at the Sarajevo screening Tuesday. Later Friday, Jolie attended the premiere of her movie in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Hundreds of fans greeted Jolie before the screening, which was attended by President Ivo Josipovic. Croatia was also devastated by the war in the early 1990s that erupted after the former Yugoslavia broke up. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the former Yugoslavia bloodshed, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless.
“The topic of this movie is familiar to the people in Croatia, so I hope they will accept it,” the Croatian state television quoted Jolie as saying. “I do not worry about negative reactions from Serbia. I believe they mostly reflect the political situation.”