Bosnia Suspends Permission for Jolie Film

The culture minister of Bosnia’s Croat-Bosniak part, Gavrilo Grahovac, said in a statement he decided to suspend the permit following a meeting with representatives of an association of women who had been raped during the country’s 1992-95 war.

The association Women Victims of War previously said they had learnt the film would tell the story of a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) woman who falls in love with her Serb rapist and commander of a wartime prison camp in which she is held.

The association's president, Bakira Hasecic, who is herself a rape victim, said the alleged storyline was an “outrageous and humiliating misrepresentation of our ordeal”. However, Hasecic told Balkan Insight she did not read the script but had learnt what it was about from the people who had a chance to see it.

Jolie previously said that the film was an apolitical love story between a Bosniak women and Serb man set against the background of the Bosnian war. Grahovac said in the statement that Jolie has failed to submit to his Ministry the script for the film, although this is required by law in order to be issued a permit.

The permit, he said, was issued by his deputy without his knowledge. Grahovac said in the statement that Jolie’s team could “resubmit the request [for the filming permit]…enclosing all necessary documentation”, but his decision to suspend appeared not to be due to procedural mistakes.

Grahovac told Bosnian radio that suspending the permit “could not stop the movie from being filmed somewhere else, but it is a way to show our disapproval for the story which is far from truth and hurts a large number of victims“.

Jolie has already started shooting the film in Hungary and was scheduled to film some of the scenes in Bosnia in November. Young Bosnian actress Zana Marjanovic, who was picked by Jolie for the lead role in the film, previously told Bosnian media that the Hollywood actress had written a highly “authentic” story.

“The simplicity of the story is what fascinated me the most…the way in which Angelina managed to write our story in such a simple and authentic way,” Marjanovic told Slobodna Bosna weekly earlier this month.

“Situations described in the script are absolutely realistic,” Marjanovic said, describing her character as a “heroine…smart, brave, emotional, wonderful woman, a very strong personality”.

The Bosnian war – which pitted the country’s Bosniak, Croat and Serb communities against each other – left at least 100,000 people dead, while 2.2 million - more than half of the country's population - were forced to leave their homes. Rape and other crimes of sexual violence occurred on a massive scale during the conflict.

So far, the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia has prosecuted 18 cases related to sexual violence during Bosnian war, establishing in some of its rulings that systematic rape and sexual enslavement in times of war represents crimes against humanity.