We saw the powerful first trailer for Angelina Jolie’s feature directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, a few weeks ago, and it gave a strong indication that we can expect a lot from Jolie as both a writer and director, bringing us what looks to be a tremendous, even important, first film.
Deadline are now reporting that In the Land of Blood and Honey will be released in the US in the native language of Bosnia, referred to as BHS, Bosanski/Hrvatski/Srpski (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian), and will be subtitled in English.
“The drama is set in the backdrop of the Bosnian War that tore the Balkan region apart in the 1990s. The film tells the story of Danijel (Goran Kostic) and Ajla (Zana Marjanovi?), Bosnians from different sides of the brutal ethnic war. As the conflict takes hold of their lives, the relationship between them changes, their motives and connection to one another become ambiguous and their allegiances grow uncertain. The couple demonstrates the emotional, moral and physical toll that war takes on individuals, and the consequences stemming from the lack of political will to intervene in a society stricken with conflict.”
During the shooting, Jolie filmed in both English and BHS, the latter of which was called Serbian-Croatian and spoken during the Bosnian War through which the film is set. That, in itself, is incredibly impressive, having to film almost everything twice.
And I think the choice to release the film in the original BHS is brave and brilliant (and arguably pushes the film towards the attention of the Academy Awards, if you want to be a bit cynical). Though I can imagine Jolie will have an audience in place across the world to see her directorial debut, having it subtitled will no doubt unfortunately steer some people away from the cinema, not interested in reading subtitles when they’re watching a film, which I think is a real shame. There’s so much talent outside the English language-speaking cinema, and releasing it in a way that clearly Jolie was hoping it would be seen sounds like an excellent move to me.
“Jolie clearly preferred to go for the authenticity of the native language. FilmDistrict’s Peter Schlessel and Bob Berney agreed with her after after they saw both versions within the past few days. “I’m honored that FilmDistrict has chosen to release the film in the United States in the original BHS-language version,” Jolie said in a statement. “It was always my hope that U.S. audiences would have the opportunity to experience this version.””
The first trailer we saw for the film was in English, and as Deadline note, there’s a good chance that the English language-version will surface either internationally in its release or, at the very least, when it comes to putting the film out on DVD/Blu-Ray, and I’m personally hoping that when it arrives in the UK, it will be in the subtitled form. If Jolie wanted it to be seen that way, that’s how I want to see it first.
In the Land of Blood and Honey is getting a limited release in New York and Los Angeles at the end of December, thus qualifying for the Oscars early next year, before rolling out through the rest of the States in January. There’s still no word of a UK release date yet, but I’m hoping we won’t have long to wait, because the trailer really was powerful, and it served as a strong reminder that though we’ve seen a lot of the Oscar candidates in the past couple of months, the race is far from over yet, and we’ve still got plenty more potentially brilliant films to look forward to before the end of the year.
