Serbian Media Accused of Distorting Jolie Film Script

The accusations follow a decision by the culture minister of the Bosniak-Croat entity, Gavrilo Grahovac, to suspend a filming permit previously issued for Jolie to shoot parts of her directorial debut in the Balkan country.

Officials and film producers say that the television network misled rape victims who protested about the movie's plot.

On Wednesday, Grahovac said that Jolie had failed to submit the film script to the ministry of the entity, although this is required by law in order to obtain a permit.

Grahovac said that his deputy issued the permit without his knowledge.While the minister explained that Jolie’s team could “resubmit the request …enclosing all necessary documentation”, his decision appeared not to relate to procedural mistakes on the part of the film-makers, but followed a meeting with representatives of an association of women who were raped during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

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

The association’s president, Bakira Hasecic, herself a rape victim, admitted she had not read the script but said such a storyline would be an “an outrageous and humiliating misrepresentation of our ordeal”.

The only people who have claimed to have read the script are representatives of the Serbian entertainment television network Pink, which also owns a TV channel in Bosnia.

The editor-in-chief of TV Pink in Bosnia, Lajla Torlak, told the daily newspaper Dnevni Avaz that she had seen the script and was “disgusted” by it.“It is about a Serbian soldier who rapes a Muslim woman, cuts off one of her breasts and then they fall in love,” Torlak said.

Torlak said she was among the people who advised TV PINK owner Zeljko Mitrovic against co-operating with Jolie. Several months ago, before Jolie confirmed her intention to write and direct the film, Mitrovic said that the Hollywood star had approached him to co-operate on the project, but that he had rejected the offer because the film was “biased against Serbs”.

Balkan Insight contacted Torlak’s office on Thursday, but she was not available for comment.

The Sarajevo-based production company Scout Film, which is assisting Jolie on the project, said that the movie plot had “nothing to do with the accusations”.

Scout Film's executive producer and location manager, Edin Sarkic, told Balkan Insight that “nothing of the kind is in the script which, by the way, nobody has seen”.Sarkic said that they had submitted the script to Grahovac and “hoped to get a positive response as soon as possible, hopefully even today.”

Jolie has so far only said that the film is an apolitical love story between a Bosniak woman and a Serb who meet on the eve of the Bosnian war.

Emir Hadzihafizbegovic, the culture minister of the Sarajevo Canton, told local media that he was “absolutely shocked [by reports about the film script]” and “could not believe that this is happening”.

Hadzihafizbegovic said that it was “grotesque that the owner of a television network that was created with (former Serbian leader Slobodan) Milosevic’s financial backing was now concerned about the dignity of Bosnian women who were victims of war.” 

TV Pink owner Mitrovic was formerly a member of the political party run by Mira Markovic, wife of Serbia’s late strongman. The growth of his media empire is widely attributed to his close ties with the Milosevic regime.

Hadzihafizbegovic said his message to Hasecic was that the two of them should back the film and “support with our signatures everything that TV Pink stands against”.

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, previously told Bosnian media that the Hollywood actress had written a highly “authentic” story.

This article is funded under the BICCED project, supported by the Swiss Cultural Programme.