Angelina Jolie Hits Backs Against Bosnian War Movie Criticism

'There's one person who has a gripe,' actress says of war victim's complaint.
By Eric Ditzian

Angelina Jolie
Photo: Toni Passig/ WireImage

After initially seeking to ease tensions with a Bosnian women's group that has raised concerns over Angelina Jolie's directorial debut, the actress has now spoken out against the group's leader and called her worries out of touch with mainstream opinion.

The Women Victims of War and its leader, Bakira Hasecic, have been speaking out against Jolie's untitled film — and a purported storyline in which a rape victim falls in love with her captor on the eve of the 1992 war — leading this week to Hasecic's declaration that she intended to file a complaint with the United Nations refugee agency.

Speaking with Reuters in Paris, Jolie hit back against the criticism. "There's one person who has a gripe," Jolie said.

"The absolute majority of the people, population, the cast, prime minister, president have been extremely supportive," she explained, adding that the vast majority of the film's crew had lived through the war, which lasted from 1992 to 1995.

In October, Jolie struck a much more conciliatory tone regarding Women Victims of War's concerns, saying in a statement, "My hope is that people will hold judgment until they have seen the film."

But after Hasecic's group filed a complaint with the UN, for which Jolie is a goodwill ambassador, the actress-turned-director has become more pointed in defending herself. Previously, a rep for Jolie denied the movie contained any plotline about a rape victim falling in love with her rapist. In her October statement, Jolie said, "There are many twists in the plot that address the sensitive nature of the relationship between the main characters, and that will be revealed once the film is released."

Jolie told Reuters she initially planned to pen a screenplay focusing on the often delayed international response to international conflicts, but that her research led her to focus on the former Yugoslavia. "It kept leaning toward Yugoslavia at the time, I wanted to learn more about it and the people, the more I read and learnt, I was drawn to that part of the world," she explained. "I met artists from that part of the world and found they were extraordinary for what they'd gone through, so I wanted to give them a platform."

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