Angelina Jolie is perhaps one of today’s best-known actresses. Hers is a name that sells movie tickets (why else would anybody have wanted to see the horribly brain-dead action flick “Salt”?). She has won an Academy Award (for “Girl Interrupted”) and was nominated for another (for “The Changeling”) while also raking in three Golden Globes and receiving nominations for three more. This is a woman that people like to watch.
However, she decided to step to the other side of the camera for her most recent film. Angelina Jolie makes her directorial debut with “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” which she also wrote. Village 8 presents a short run of this film as part of their Louisville Exclusives series. It will run until this Thursday, January 26.
“In the Land of Blood and Honey” is a story about love and all its complications set during the Bosnian War. Danijel (Goran Kostić), who fights for the Bosnian Serbs, oversees a prison camp where he encounters Ajla (Zana Marjanović), a Bosnian Muslim artist, with whom he once had a relationship. Naturally, complications ensue.
Jolie was inspired to write the script after a trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina as a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador. As pre-production got underway, she decided that she wanted to be the one to direct the film. She had been touched by stories of the war and its survivors, and her goal was to renew interest in the story.
The film, which is partially subtitled, was one of five nominations for Best Foreign Language Film for the 69th Golden Globes Awards. (It lost to the Iranian film “A Separation.”) It was also selected by the Producers Guild of America to receive the Stanley Kramer Award, which honors films which “illuminate provocative social issues.”
Theater information and showtimes can be found at the Village 8 Theater website.
Image courtesy of the Internet Movie Database.
