Last week, we brought you the first look of Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut, an untitled love story centered in the Bosnian War. Jolie and crew are currently shooting in Budapest, Hungary, with plans to move production to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, by the end of the month.
However, the Bosnian minister in charge of granting film permits pulled Jolie’s over rumors that the film’s love affair begins with a Serbian man raping a Muslim woman. Jolie took time out of her busy shoot schedule to address these rumors, and spoke with USA Today:
“It’s very simple…There was a nasty rumor that it was about a relationship that started with a rape and torture – and it’s not.”
She went on to say the couple meets in a far more conventional fashion, “It’s a relationship that starts in the scene we’re shooting today — in a club, before the war. The main characters (Goran Kostic and Zana Marjanovic) begin with lovely, happy, beautiful singing and dancing. It’s a normal relationship in that way, how it begins.”
Jolie, a heralded UN goodwill ambassador, promises her film will not shy away from the brutality of the conflict that resulted in more than 100,000 deaths, and that, “The film is about the experience that a lot of different people, on all different sides, have as war takes its toll…A couple that maybe would have lived a certain life, had the war not begun, end up having a very different story because of the war.”
When asked of the fury Women Victims of War Association’s spurred over the rumored script that resulted in her permit being revoked, Jolie said, “Everything is to be expected when you do films about heavy subject matters that have to do with something so sensitive and so recent…It’s absolutely to be handled as delicately as possible.”
Bosnia’s cultural minister, Gavrilo Grahovac, has now read a copy of the Jolie penned script, and her permit has been reinstated. The project will move locations near month’s end, as planned.
Are you looking forward to Jolie’s directorial debut?