Angelina Jolie’s Anti-Serbian Movie… or is it?
Angelina Jolie coming to Belgrade?
Read the review of “In the land of blood and honey”
Angelina Jolie is doing a movie on Bosnian war – it’s official now and it will star Rade Serbedzija together with possibly other actors from the region. While the plot is still unclear, it should revolve around a “love story” between a Bosnian Muslim woman and a Bosnian Serb soldier. In Serbia, the movie-to-be is already causing controversy because of the ever-so-touchy subject of Serbian involvement in Bosnian war. Angelina is supposedly planning to visit Belgrade in the near future but the readers’ comments on Serbian news sites mostly say she is not welcome because the movie she plans to direct will be “anti-Serbian”.
Update: Trailer for Angelina’s movie “Land of Blood and Honey” (U zemlji krvi i meda)
I could maybe tell how I feel about this if I could concentrate enough on the trailer without getting distracted by the ridiculous Serbian-English accent.
Which actually brings us to an interesting topic – anti-Serb propaganda in movies.
List of “anti-Serb” movies
UPDATE: November 2011. John Travolta and Robert De Niro star in a new movie, “Killing Season” where Travolta will play Serbian army veteran trying to kill De Niro in some mountains for an unknown reason. Trailer is not out yet.
I have to start with the Expendables because I just saw it couple of days ago, so it’s the freshest one. Even though anti-Serb sentiment is stated in a single sentence by Mickey Rourke, “when we were in Bosnia, fighting those bad Serbs”, it was enough to provoke enormous booing from the audience and even a half-filled plastic coke glass being thrown at the movie screen (or maybe it was fanta).
Most famous example is probably The Peacemaker with Clooney and Kidman. Bosnian Serb is trying to blow up the UN building in New York. With a nuclear bomb. Alas, he fails at the last second. I remember also the audience was cheering for the bad guy, and let out a sigh of disappointment when the bomb failed to explode. The Serbian guy in the movie was played by a Croatian Romanian actor (thanks for the correction, Bogdan).
Savior with Dennis Quade is the least hated of all “anti-Serb” movies in Serbia, because it shows other sides comitting war crimes, not just the Serbian. The Croatian forces were played by Serbian actors.
Welcome to Sarajevo with Woody Harrelson also comes to mind, where one of the main focuses of the film is the Serbian bombing of Sarajevo. The movie was based on the book Natasha’s story, only in the movie the character of Bosnian Serb orphan girl Natasha is changed to Bosnian Muslim orphan girl Emira. The Bosnian guy in the movie was played by a Croatian actor.
Note the similarity between the guy on the picture and Niko Belic?
Behind Enemy Lines with Owen Wilson is maybe the least known, probably because it’s a very bad movie – even the guy who was the inspiration for the main role complained about how the movie turned out. It was based on a true story of an American pilot who needs to escape from the Serb territory and the Serbian soldiers after his plane is shot down. The Ratko Mladic character in the movie was played by a Polish actor, while a Serbian sniper was played by a Russian.
Did I forget some movie of the sorts? Let me know in the comments and I will add it to the list.
The Effect
What is interesting for me in all these movies dealing with Bosnian war is of course, the choice of “the bad guys”. It is very strange to see a movie where your countrymen and/or your country itself is represented in a completely negative way. The effect of this is – it creates a negative image of the country abroad that is difficult to shake off afterwards – this is why many foreigners are afraid of the Serbs before they actually meet some of them or come to Serbia. But it also creates a strong nationalistic sentiment in the country itself. Many Serbs are certain that the West hates Serbia, and the proof is – the West casts us as the bad guys in so many movies. Why would they do that if they don’t hate us?
I don’t think the producers think so much about who’s the bad guy and who’s the good guy in the movie. Also, I don’t believe their primary motive is to turn the world’s attention to the suffering of victims. Their main concern is the money the movie’s gonna make. In other words – if only a part of the money all these movies made was invested in Bosnia, that state would perhaps be less messed up than it is today.
But you have to have a bad guy in the movie. It’s nothing personal.
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In the land of Blood and Honey
Movie about Radivoj Korac – Belgrade’s basketball legend
Cinema Komunisto – Documentary About Movie Making In Communist Yugoslavia
Tilva Ros – a promising small movie
Documentary about Ibarska magistrala
How about first season of “24”?
I know it’s not a movie, but still a popular TV show.
the guy that was trying to blow up the UN building in The Peacemaker is Marcel Iures and he’s Romanian.
@Bogdan, thanks for the correction.
@Jovan, will list it, thanks, just have to see what’s it about, I never followed “24” (shame on me, I know)
CSI had at least one episode with Bad Serb in the echo, but cannot remember either which CSI nor what he was bad about it
Here’s one with Richard Gere: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455782/ But don’t waste time on it…
suggestion for Aangelina:Why not love story between Tutsi woman and Hutu soldier during Civil War in Rwanda?
Also, Leverage season 1, episode 6 = “The Leverage team goes after a Serbian adoption agency that’s scamming money from desperate American couples looking to adopt needy war orphans. ”
Although I think there are no Serbian actors in it…
You could possibly include Rat Uzivo although that was more the state as the bad guy from what I recall (it’s been a few years since I watched so I don’t remember it too well).
To add to your other thoughts, I think a lot of the time the point is not so much to say who the bad guys are, but who the ‘good guys’ are. An excuse to say ‘we did the right thing’ or alternatively “we might not have done 100% right, but we tried to and it was only ‘the man/govt’ who was bad .. because we are good!”. The Expendables could fit into that as an attempt to set the scene “Yeah, we’re bad asses, but only ever for the right reasons”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171741/
Pusher III http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425379/
Sort of.
At least twenty anti-Serbian movies reviewed:
http://chetnixploitation.blogspot.com/
Inspector Lynley Series. An evil Bosnian Serb played by Serge Soric carries on the sterotype here.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/mystery/lynley/series6.html
Hello.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108171/ – something about bad Serbian general who needs to be dead.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395699/ – at very beginning of movie. I think that Serbs are attacking some island.
As a Serbian-American I am appauled to watch Hollywood Western propoganda movies portraying Serbs as being war mongering, blood thirsty, back woods peasants but laugh at how and who they get to play Serbian paramilitary units.
Take Behind Enemy Lines for example. The actors are Croatians and Czechs and the movie was filmed in The Czech Republic. Another bomb of a movie is Sniper 2 with Tom Berenger. This movie has Hungarians portraying Serb soldiers who are hell bent on creating “genocide” and laying to waste Sarajevo. Since when did Bosnia look like Budapest and all the street signs read in Hungarian? Another turkey is the Spanish movie Warriors. It has Spanish actors playing Serb Chetniks and Albanians as well. The one key moment in the movie is when KFOR troops are slaughtered by KLA terrorists. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! Kosovo Albanians know about this all to well.
As for this so called love story about a Bosniak woman and a Bosnian Serb soldier that Jolie says will be unbiased and objective, I will believe it when I see it.
The Russian actor, Vladimir Mashkov, who played a Serbian sniper in Behind Enemy Lines served as the obvious model of Niko Bellic of Grand Theft Auto 4. Niko Bellic even wears much the same clothing as Vladimir Mashkov’s character in Behind Enemy Lines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4P3MEIvvOE
While we are on the subject of serbs being portrayed badly in movies, my girlfriend (serbian) made me aware of the following disgusting movie titled “Serbian movie” which focuses on the subject of paedophilia & is on a par with the Gaspar Noe’s “Irreversible”. The film contains absolutely no redeeming social or political or artistic value & has been banned in almost all western countries yet is allowed to be released to serbian cinemas. The film is directed by Srdjan Spasojevic. Can anyone tell me why a serbian director would want to spurr on the general opinion of which many previous films have portrayed the serbs as evil baby killers & why cinemas are supporting this release?
Of coarse we are going to be portrayed as the bad guys, it’s not like NATO fought on our side! I believe that there is a lot of ignorance surrounding the Bosnian Conflict and the Yugoslav Civil War in general in the west and perhaps the whole world. Making movies and stories portraying Serbs as rapists with Neanderthal like ethics and morals and showing it to the already ignorant American public only makes the perception worse. Sadly there isn’t much anyone can do but boycott these movies or write angry letters. The people that make the movies are out to make a couple million, they don’t care about the message they are sending out.
I think it is our duty as countrymen of our beloved homeland, as Serbs, to show the world who we really are, especially us who are living abroad. We need to better ourselves as individuals and as a nation as a whole and only then will the world realize what a “Serb” really is.
I’m German. When you’re German you get somewhat oblivious to “being the bad guys in movies”. But of course our problem is also that we CAN’T develop patriotism, because our history is way too heavy to ever be proud of our country – even 60 years later. It will take a long time for those wounds to heal.
By the way, I noticed that you don’t have an RSS feed for your blog entries – you should fix that ASAP! Also, a contact e-mail address would be nice, so I don’t need to tell you that in a comment
Hey Ada, thanks for your comment. I forgot to set it up after the recent redesign. It’s corrected now, you can find the RSS link in the sidebar now. Cheers!
He could be the nicest person you ever meet! You dont need to talk about people you dont even know.. Guys are jealous. Normal girls love him.
Respect to article author , some good entropy.
Movies are too narrow anyway. This movie is one-sided for my taste.
I dont think many of her movies bring to light important things, a lot of the characters she plays are one sided. So I wouldnt expect her to be accurate in this film. Also, because shes hollywood royalty everyone is going to hear about this film and want to see it. I hope she doesnt make fools of Serbs.
Ronan,
Here is why “Serbian” producers will make mazochistic movies that serve no other purpose but to confirm all the trashy news claims from 1991 onwards.
NATO bombed Serbia and then funded an uprising in October of 2000 that brought in the pro-EU “democratic opposition”. This government is a puppet government that does everything that the West orders. If this was not true, why would NATO bomb Serbia fund the oppoisition movement and then allow the Serbs to rule their country democratically as the people elect? They wouldn’t and they didn’t. The same direction has been set for all government institutions and sectors from economy, security and defense forces to culture and education. If the Serbs “admit” that they are scum, then that settles the dispute.
Milos the Budala said
” I think it is our duty as countrymen of our beloved homeland, as Serbs, to show the world who we really are, especially us who are living abroad. We need to better ourselves as individuals and as a nation as a whole and only then will the world realize what a “Serb” really is.”
We have already showed the world who we really are you idiot pretending to be a Serb. Serbs have nothing to prove to anyone. We are better. We are Christian Europeans of the highest order who have stood against the Satanic masses. Nuff said.
Neither the (ugly)Angelina nor John Travolta look Serbian so why are they playing the parts?
Ronan, Velimir,
You could just as well ask why would someone comment on a movie they clearly haven’t seen
I will wait for the movie to come out and watch it before commenting.
There is The Hunted with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro with the opening scene in Kosovo in 99 with Serbs massacring Albanians.
How Yugoslavia was destroyed…...http://max-balkanboy.blogspot.com/2012/04/readers-will-recall-that-justification.html