In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011)
Movie · 2011 · Drama, Romance, War · 2h 7m · R · English
Curator score: 1.3/10 (35.1K ratings)
Love can change what we want… war can change who we are
Overview
During the Bosnian War, Danijel, a soldier fighting for the Serbs, re-encounters Ajla, a Bosnian who's now a captive in his camp he oversees. Their once promising connection has become ambiguous as their motives have changed.
Ratings
- Curator score: 1.3/10
- IMDb: 4.7/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 57%
- Metacritic: 56
- TMDB: 5.8/10
Director
Angelina Jolie
Production
GK Films
Cast
Zana Marjanović, Rade Šerbedžija, Goran Kostić, Branko Đurić, Vanessa Glođo, Džana Pinjo, Miloš Timotijević, Goran Jevtić, Feđa Štukan, Dolya Gavanski, Nikola Đuričko, Boris Ler
Curator Review
Verdict
A serious, emotionally charged attempt to dramatize the Bosnian War, but the film is widely seen as uneven in craft and politically blunt in its framing. It has some value as a grim historical melodrama, yet the central romance and the director’s inexperience keep it from landing with the force it wants.
Best for
- viewers interested in Bosnian War dramas
- audiences curious about Angelina Jolie’s early directing work
- people who can tolerate flawed but earnest issue-driven films
- those looking for a bleak wartime romance with political context
Skip if
- you want nuanced, balanced historical storytelling
- you are sensitive to exploitative or trauma-centered romance plots
- you need polished direction and strong script structure
- you dislike melodrama overtaking historical events
Overview
This is an ambitious but compromised debut: a war film that wants to confront atrocity and also stage a doomed romance, and those two impulses never fully harmonize. The result feels earnest in intent but awkward in execution, with a heavy, sometimes schematic approach to character and conflict.
Worth noting
What works best is the sense of historical urgency and the cast’s commitment to material that is often more solemn than dramatically alive. The film does convey the brutality and moral collapse of wartime captivity, but it does so in a way that can feel blunt, repetitive, and emotionally manipulative.
Bottom line
As a curatorial pick, it’s more interesting than fully successful. If you’re drawn to difficult historical dramas and can accept a flawed, first-feature sensibility, there is enough here to justify a watch. If you want a more nuanced or artistically assured treatment of war and human entanglement, there are stronger alternatives.
Top Letterboxd reviews
⋆˚࿔ elvira 𝜗𝜚˚⋆ (1★) · 65 likes
no more movies about war criminals and their victim falling “in love” ‼️❌🚫
Miloš Z. Vučković (1★) · 30 likes
Jolie is an utterly terrible director; take a look at the weird sequence in which people talk and laugh while playing games... I've seen that kind of editing in student films. In the Land of Blood and Honey is sadly one sided, which is acceptable to her and credited to “artistic vision” (google the interview with Jugoslav Ćosić). Let us pretend, just for a moment, that the director AJ in fact knows a thing or two about artistic vision. Giving… more
Auteur (2★) · 21 likes
I would have rather just read the information provided during the opening and closing credits, because the two hours in between has nothing more to say. Angelina Jolie's In The Land Of Blood And Honey is outrage in search of a story, a document of the crimes committed during the war in Bosnia-Herzogovina in the nineties, into which is shoehorned an uncomfortable tale of forbidden love between a Muslim woman and a Serbian officer. Neither aspect works very well, mostly… more I would have rather just read the information provided during the opening and closing credits, because the two hours in between has nothing more to say. Angelina Jolie's In The Land Of Blood And Honey is outrage in search of a story, a document of the crimes committed during the war in Bosnia-Herzogovina in the nineties, into which is shoehorned an uncomfortable tale of forbidden love between a Muslim woman and a Serbian officer. Neither aspect works very well, mostly… more
Des Saint (1.5★) · 19 likes
What gets me is that Angelina also wrote this lop-sided movie herself, intentionally misinterpreting the conflict in former Bosnia and making the Serbs as some kind of monsters. In this condensed biased and one sided soap opera with a misguided political message, I could not find a few minutes in the movie without a major logical, artistic or documentation loophole.
Prof. Ratigan (3★) · 11 likes
Perhaps it's patronizing and prejudiced to say that this is surprisingly good coming from Angelina Jolie. She is, after all, known for her global awareness and she brings it to a situation that isn't as well understood as it should be. Jolie paints a picture of Bosnia and Herzegovina that is strikingly similar to that of Nazi Germany. Genocides are notoriously similar across cultures in their choice of words, practices, and bizarre acceptability. How can things get so far? That… more Perhaps it's patronizing and prejudiced to say that this is surprisingly good coming from Angelina Jolie. She is, after all, known for her global awareness and she brings it to a situation that isn't as well understood as it should be. Jolie paints a picture of Bosnia and Herzegovina that is strikingly similar to that of Nazi Germany. Genocides are notoriously similar across cultures in their choice of words, practices, and bizarre acceptability. How can things get so far? That… more
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Topics
war drama, historical tragedy, forbidden love, ethnic cleansing, captivity, melodrama, political conflict, bleak tone, 1990s Europe, trauma