Jolie’s filming permit cancelled

Bosnian minister cancels permit for Jolie to shoot parts of her debut feature film in Bosnia.

SARAJEVO: Bosnian minister cancelled a permit for Hollywood star Angelina Jolie to shoot parts of her debut feature film in Bosnia, citing incomplete paperwork.

The Oscar-winning actor had begun shooting the film in Budapest and her production company said it was a love story between a Serbian man and a Bosnian woman who meet on the eve of the Bosnian war. 100,000 people were killed in the war between 1992 and 1995.

The filming was expected to conclude in November in Bosnia.

Jolie said the film would not meddle in politics, but associations of female victims from the Bosnian war have already objected to the details of the plot.

“In the film, the victim is falling in love with her torturer,” Bakira Hasecic, president of the Women Victims of War association, was quoted in the daily newspaper, Oslobodjenje.

But Sarajevo-based producer Scout Film said it just a love story and Jolie has offered to meet the women to reassure them about the movie’s content.

Hasecic urged authorities to ban the shooting of the film in Bosnia “because of the script, which offends female war victims and distorts the truth about what women have actually suffered in detention camps,” according to the paper.

Gavrilo Grahovac, the sports minister of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat federation, also cancelled permission for the shooting.

“Since the request (for the shooting) is not in accordance with the law, it is incomplete and not accompanied by the necessary script, Minister Gavrilo Grahovac decided to annul the permit,” the ministry said in a statement.

“We were informed today that we need to amend the documentation and I have just forwarded the script to the ministry,” said Edin Sarkic, the Scout Film executive producer and location manager, adding that the ministry had never asked for a script but only for a synopsis.

“I hope the film will get the green light after the officials see the script,” Sarkic told Reuters by telephone.”The film has nothing to do with the allegation made by this women’s association. As we said before, it is only a love story.”

Jolie is a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has sent a letter to the women’s group last week to reassure them about her film and requested a meeting the next time she is in Sarajevo.

“Don’t judge me before you see the film,” Jolie said in a letter read to the women by Naveed Hussain, the UNHCR representative in Bosnia, and published in Oslobodjenje.

Jolie arrived in Sarajevo in August for a surprise visit and met members of Bosnia’s inter-ethnic presidency to discuss ways to help thousands of returning war refugees.

The celebrity visited returnees in eastern Bosnia in April with her partner Brad Pitt and promised to come back.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2010.