BERLIN (AP) — Angelina Jolie says she’s nervous and excited about the upcoming premiere in Sarajevo of her Bosnian war movie “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”
The film, which is showing at the Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday, is set to make its full debut in the Bosnian capital on Feb. 14, though it already has been shown to some groups there.
Already released in the U.S., Jolie’s directorial debut is a drama about a Serb soldier who finds his ex-lover, a Muslim Bosnian woman, among sex slaves in a camp.
“I’m nervous and I’m excited,” Jolie said of the Bosnian premiere. “I’ll probably cry through the entire thing.”
“I’ll be very, very moved because, of course, a lot of the people coming are the victims of war so it’s going to be heavy,” she added.
Jolie, 36, said that “it didn’t take much for me to be driven” while directing the film, noting that her cast lived through the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.
Actress Vanesa Glodjo, she said, crossed Sarajevo’s “Sniper Alley” — named after the heavy fire by sharpshooters that made it notoriously dangerous — daily to get to her theater school.
“Art meant that much to her that she risked her life every day,” Jolie said. “The privilege you feel to have the opportunity to work with such a dedicated and such an extraordinary human being made it all … just wonderful.”
Glodjo said that Jolie “gave me the words and opportunity to express what I lived during the war.”
Jolie’s film is showing outside the main competition at the Berlin festival.
The film has triggered outrage among Serbs although it has yet to be premiered in Serbia and the Serb-controlled parts of Bosnia. Authorities rejected a request by some Serb war veterans’ organizations to ban the film because of alleged anti-Serb bias.
Jolie stressed during a press conference at the festival Saturday that “this is not a documentary … it’s an artistic interpretation.”
“I tried to bring as much as I could, but there are many different sides to war, many different sides to this war,” she said.
“This was this particular story, but there are many different stories to be told in this war and many different ways to tell the story of this war.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.