Only 12 people attended the earliest screening in a movie theater in central Belgrade, some of whom left before the end, reports said. “More police were there than viewers,” a cinema employee, who identified himself only as Misha, said.
Bosnian Muslims
The Serbian premiere of Angelina Jolie’s Balkan war drama “In the Land of Blood and Honey” was met by derision Friday, as Serbs angry over what they consider an unfair depiction stayed away in droves.
Screenings attracted just a handful of viewers, local media said Friday, with one newspaper calling that “more than the movie deserves” and another deeming it a “fiasco.”
Jolie’s directorial debut – a love story in which a Serb soldier finds his ex-lover, a Muslim woman, among sex slaves in a camp – has triggered mixed emotions in the postwar Balkans, which are still grappling with historic ethnic tensions.
It received a standing ovation in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, but has sparked outrage among Serbs, who have blasted the movie as propaganda designed to portray them as the villains of the bloody 1992-95 Balkan wars.
Tens of thousands of people were killed in Bosnia’s war, which pitted the country’s ethnic Serbs against Muslims and Croats. Serbs have been widely blamed for most of the atrocities in the conflict, which is considered to be Europe’s worst bloodshed since World War II.
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