Opinion: Controversy over Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut in Bosnia

by Dragana Kaurin

Angelina Jolie in Budapest, Hungary, filming her directorial debut. / Rego Korosi

Over the past decade we have seen a rise of young, talented filmmakers in Bosnia. Films such as Welcome to Bosnia, The Days and Hours, Fraulein and Grbavica address the social and political issues facing Bosnia in post-war life. These films approach the issues of families separated by war, lost homes and memories attached to them and the effects of mass rape on a society. By indirectly making social statements these films serve as entry points into dialogue and have created a space for people to identify with characters and slowly open up and discuss the sad state the war has left us in.

The storytelling in these films is generally loved across ethnic and state borders, as they have cast actors of different nationalities and are careful not to point fingers but rather address, as one movie quotes, “how we’ve been able to look each other in the eye, once the dust has begun to settle.”

Earlier this year, Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie announced that her directorial debut will be a film about the Bosnian War. Shortly thereafter, rumors surfaced regarding the premise of the story: a Bosniak rape victim who falls in love with her Serbian rapist.

Bakira Hasecic, the President of the Bosnian Women Victims of War Association, has publicly criticized and denounced the rumored plot of the film, which focuses on the lead female character “falling in love with her torturer.” In an open letter to Jolie, Hasecic wrote:

“War victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina are worried and restless with the news of your intent with which you wish to promote, before the eyes of the world, your movie which we understand stands to falsify the historic truth about the crimes of mass gang rapes of Bosniak women in the 1992-1995 period, when our country was subjected to a brutal aggression… That suffering is the truth… not only the truth in my personal and painful experience, but also in the experience of thousands recorded and documented witness accounts of women which were subjected to the most torturous rapes and repeated rapes and other sexual abuse… under the forces of the attackers.”

Following further protest from women across the country, Bosnian cultural minister Gavrilo Grahovac revoked Jolie’s filming permit. Jolie, as reported in the Guardian, responded that the movie is not about rape but rather it is a love story between a Serb prison camp guard and his former girlfriend, who is a detainee. In an effort to regain permission to shoot, Jolie requested to meet with the panel and asked them to read her script.

Two weeks later, on October 23, Jolie visited refugee camps in Bosnia and it was concurrently announced that the U.S. government would donate $500,000 for IDP housing in Bosnia.

Although it is not confirmed that Jolie and Pitt had anything to do with the donation, Radomir Jovicic, the mayor of the eastern Bosnian town of Rogatica, publicly thanked the couple for their activism, praising the duo for bringing attention to abominable conditions in the camps. Grahovac re-issued the permit a week later, claiming that after review of the script, filming in Bosnia will be allowed.

It seems that the problem is not whether or not the film includes scenes depicting rape, or what Jolie’s position on the war is, but rather that she is saying anything at all, as an outsider, and not a member of our collective guilt and suffering. The people of Bosnia have worked so hard to put the pieces of history together to find a shared narrative. It seems utterly impossible that Jolie has surpassed us in finding something original to add to our group memory. There is a public outcry from the women’s groups because it is stemming from expressions of collective suffering that have been reserved for the direct victims of the abuse.

There are degrees of victimhood that present themselves after a crisis, which is something I have noticed in Sarajevo after the war, after 9/11 and amongst the Haitian diaspora in New York after the earthquake last year. After that proverbial dust settles, people speak of what has happened to them and naturally compare, placing themselves in ranks of “who has had it worse,” until somebody eventually has the final word. Direct victims of the abuse, survivors like Bakira Hasecic, are usually the ones that are considered to reserve the right speak on behalf of the wronged and are the ones with the most powerful voices. Jolie and her film do not play a part in either our collective guilt or suffering, which is probably the root cause of the protest, further fueled by the anger that there will be economic profit from our suffering.

A number of prominent artists from the region such as Jasmila Žbanić, the director of the film Grbavica (a film that deals with the effects of rape as a weapon of war) have sided with Jolie, claiming that rights to expression and artistic freedom are not to be disputed. Still others continue to question Jolie’s intentions, argue that the film is being made too soon and ask whether she has the right to make such commentary.

It is highly unlikely that Jolie will stop the project given her investment in time and money in the film. Since she is not releasing any information on the film, the public will have to wait to see what it is the cameras are pointing at and how her film might be incorporated in the collective memory the people of Bosnia and in the diaspora are still shaping.

Published in RightsNews Volume 29, no. 2, February, 2011.
Download issue as PDF