In the Land of Blood and Honey, Berlin Film Festival - review

This passionate film about the horrors of war seems so determined to disturb us that it sometimes forgets polemics alone isn't sufficient.

We need to be involved with the characters, too.
The conflict in question is the Bosnian war of 1992-95 and the language spoken is Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian. Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Muslim artist living in Sarajevo, meets and falls for Danijel (Goran Kostic), a Serbian policeman. A bomb blast forces them apart and when they next see each other, he is serving in the Serbian army which has now taken the city. She is a prisoner and very likely to be one of the many due for ethnic cleansing.

He saves her from rape and installs her in a flat where she can paint and the now-wary relationship can flourish. He may at heart be a decent man, but he still takes pot shots at refugees scurrying past the flat's window.

The love story, however, seems a little like a device to allow Jolie to show the hideous violence going on outside. This is done through newsreel footage, references to unseen atrocities and well-handled fictional scenes of battle. Other characters emerge, such as Ajla's terrified sister (Vanessa Glodjo) and a cruel Serbian general, well portrayed by Rade Serbedzija.

The film, while telling us nothing very new about war, at least emphasises that once upon a time Serbs, Croats, Muslims and Christians lived side by side in peace, but that war between neighbours is often where the worst atrocities occur. Jolie doesn't flinch in showing the sexual attraction between the lovers and the hateful results of the conflict.

But there are times when it looks as if she's giving us a lesson rather than telling a story, and her two leading actors do not always seem comfortable in their parts. Even so, this is an often impressive first feature and clearly a sincere and hard-hitting exposure of a terrible time.