Serbs slam Angelina Jolie for her divisive and negative movie

Award winning actress, Angelina Jolie’s movie directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey has incurred the wrath of Serbs who have slammed the movie for painting a negative picture of the entire Serb population.

The movie is a love story set during the Bosnian war in the midst of the forceful removal of non-Serbs through several ethnic cleansing. It depicts the pre-war romance between a Muslim artist and a Serbian police officer which becomes progressively more twisted by the ethnic conflict.

While some people have welcomed the movie saying Bosnia’s story has finally been told at last, Serbs have hit hard against the movie with some threatening Angelina Jolie. Others have said she is not welcomed in their territory.

According to the angry Serbs, while they will not deny the fact that crimes were committed, those crimes were committed by individuals and not the entire Serb population something they say Angelina Jolie failed to portray in her movie.

The Oscar winning actress did admit in an interview with the BBC that although she enjoyed directing the movie, she was terrified with mixed feelings as to whether people will feel comfortable with it.

According to her, “People are looking to say it should be 50-50, it should be equal. I don’t understand that, the war wasn’t that way. They don’t want to see these atrocities; they don’t want to be remembered of these atrocities. Some people want to deny it even happened and those people will be angry.”

The movie received a Peace Award on Monday February 13 at the Berlin Film Festival and was later premiered before 5,000 people in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Tuesday, February 14

Death threats

Angelina Jolie and her cast have since the premiere received several death threats.

She told the Guardian in an interview after the premiere in Sarajevo that, “There were things sent to me, there were things posted online. The cast … have never complained to me about these threats but I’ve heard through other people it was happening … one of them did have their windows smashed in on their cars and someone else had an issue when their phone was hacked and emails were sent out saying they were from them and saying they had been hurt.”

To her, “It was a scary thought that someone was thinking along those lines. The physical threats are not what most bothered me because I have been to so many different countries where there are different kinds of threats, being in Afghanistan and other places as an outspoken American woman.”

Angelina Jolie added that, “It was more that … with a film like this, you don’t want it to be used as a tool … especially in an election year, where people are deciding to label it without having seen it, and try to incite aggression and violence.”

myjoyonline.com