Angelina Jolie's debut as a director, the gruelling drama In the Land of Blood and Honey set during the war in Bosnia, is to be screened at the British Foreign Office as the Oscar-winning actor gives her support to a new government initiative aimed at tackling rape in war zones.
Jolie, a special envoy for the United Nations refugee agency, will attend the event and give a speech prior to the screening. In the Land of Blood and Honey was the source of controversy during its production process after it was criticised by Bosnian victims of sexual violence during the Balkan conflict, their anger having centred on erroneous reports that the film saw a Bosnian rape victim fall in love with her Serbian attacker. Since then, the film has drawn praise from critics and rape victims alike. Earlier this year it won a special Producers Guild prize – the Stanley Kramer award – for illuminating provocative social issues.
Jolie is backing the assembly of a UK team of lawyers, human rights campaigners, psychologists, forensic experts and doctors, who will gather evidence about sexual violence in war zones in support of UN teams and local charities. The initiative is expected to be in place by the end of the year.
The foreign secretary, William Hague, who will host the launch event, said: "Sexual violence is a problem found in every society in the world, and all countries have to do more to tackle it at home. We have to ensure equal rights for women at every level of society, and to protect the vulnerable, most of all our children.
"But it is in the context of war and conflict that sexual violence is found to the most appalling degree, and on a scale most of us cannot imagine. Sexual violence is an issue which is central to conflict prevention and to peace-building worldwide. Where there is no justice, the seeds of future conflict are sewn, and development is held back."
The UN estimates that only 30 convictions have been made from an estimated 50,000 rapes committed during the 1990s Balkans conflict, during which sexual attacks were often used as a weapon of war and a tool of ethnic cleansing. Atrocities have also been particularly widespread in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and the Darfur region of Sudan.
In the Land of Blood and Honey, which Jolie screened in both English and Serbo-Croatian versions, portrays a romance between Danijel (Goran Kostić), a Serb man, and Ajla (Zana Marjanović), a Bosniak woman, which blossoms as the last nails are being hammered into Yugoslavia's coffin. Torn apart by the war, they meet unexpectedly when Ajla is taken prisoner in a war camp and Danijel is her jailer. The Guardian's Andrew Pulver called it "sombre, powerful, and undeniably gripping" after the drama screened at the Berlin film festival in February.
