US actress Angelina Jolie arrived in Zagreb on Friday for tonight's premiere of her directorial and screenwriting debut "In the Land of Blood and Honey" at the CineStar Arena theatre where, just before the screening, she will speak to the press.
This is Jolie's second visit in Croatia, after visiting the Brijuni archipelago last year.
Many cultural and political figures are expected to attend the screening, including President Ivo Josipovic. After the premiere, there will be a party for more than 700 guests.
"In the Land of Blood and Honey", a story about a Bosnian Serb man and a Bosnia Muslim woman, shows the whole brutality of war. Because of the war, the couple grow increasingly distant and find themselves on opposite sides. He serves in the army under his father's command, meeting her again in a Serb-run camp for women where Muslim women are systematically raped.
Jolie has said she wanted to express her dissatisfaction with the fact that the international community failed to stop in a timely fashion the biggest war in Europe after WW2, and to treat the issue of mass rapes of women in war, responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the possibility of reconciliation.
The film is coming to Zagreb after a very emotional premiere in Sarajevo before 5,000 spectators.
Apart from the fact that a film about the Bosnian war has been directed by, according to the media, one of world's most beautiful women, the film has met with great interest in the region also because of the sensitive subject. The Bosnian Serb entity has called it one-sided and will not screen it, with a local distributor saying it is not profitable, as no one would want to see it. However, it will play in cinemas in Serbia.
"In the Land of Blood and Honey" premiered in the US late last year and was nominated for a Golden Globe for best foreign film. It won the Producers Guild of America Stanley Kramer Award for its contribution to the understanding of provocative social issues in an accessible and noble way.
