Angelina Jolie’s debut on Bosnian tragedy plays close to home

HOLLYWOOD actress Angelina Jolie said she was nervous and excited about the premiere in Sarajevo of her Bosnian war movie In The Land Of Blood And Honey.

The film, which had its first public showing at the Berlin International Film Festival last night, is set to make its full debut in the Bosnian capital this week although it already has been shown to some groups there.

Already released in the US, largely to critical acclaim, 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 theatre 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.”

Jolie’s film is showing outside the main competition at the Berlin festival.