In the Land of Blood and Honey is a directorial debut of Angelina Jolie. The movie is about the conflict that erupted in 1991 between Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. The ethnic cleansing left an estimated 100,000 people dead. The movie depicts the isolation of war: the humanitarian trucks being rocketed, the old people being abandoned in their beds, women being repeatedly violated, kids being rocketed for building snowman. The Bosnian desperately wanted help. But the world stood by and did nothing. The US didn’t want to get involved, under a pretext that it was a European problem. As the fighting spread, the UN got involved in ’94-95, bringing US to the table.
The movie shows the sad side of human nature, the cruelty and betrayal of war. What happens to neighbors who once loved each other, only ethnicity separated them. The urge to protect your own blood relatives, turns the love for the neighbors into vengeance.
It is a great history lesson that we all should participate in and be aware of the genocides that we were ignorant of when it happened.
