In the Land of Blood and Honey (Bosnian: U zemlji krvi i meda) is a 2011 war drama film written, produced, and directed by Angelina Jolie, and starring Zana Marjanović, Goran Kostić and Rade Šerbedžija.

They enjoy the evening together, but many of the patrons are killed and Danijel is badly injured when the club is destroyed by artillery fire, signifying the opening salvo of the Bosnian War.

Some months later, Ajla and her sister Lejla prepare to flee the now besieged city, but their neighborhood is occupied by the Army of Republika Srpska before they can escape.

They begin an intense love affair, but Ajla is deeply disturbed by the horrors of the camp, and she subsequently makes numerous attempts to escape, all of which fail.

Danijel's unit is involved in ethnic cleansing massacres directed by Nebojša, although these tactics do little to change the situation at the front line.

While she paints, he criticizes the "Muslim decadence" of such a career, which contrasts starkly with his own mother, a lifelong farm labourer widowed during World War II.

He then confronts his father, who attacks him and berates him for disgracing the family, saying "your mother would turn over in her grave if she knew you liked to fuck Muslim whores."

Danijel narrowly avoids being killed alongside his father when a massive explosion destroys the church (whether or not Ajla had a role in the attack is left ambiguous).

[2] While writing the script she consulted with Richard Holbrooke, a U.S. diplomat and high-ranking Clinton Administration official who was one of the architects of the Dayton Agreement that put an end to the Bosnian War, General Wesley Clark, who was the director for strategic plans and policy on the United States Department of Defense's Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war, and Tom Gjelten, a foreign correspondent for NPR.

[8] However, he refused to do business with them, releasing a press statement: "I've held great affection and admiration for Angelina Jolie both as a person and as an artist, but unfortunately she's full of prejudice against the Serbs.

[14] Jolie explained the reason she wrote and directed the film was to rekindle attention for the survivors of a war that took place in recent history.

[15] In an interview with Christiane Amanpour, Jolie said she felt a responsibility to learn about the conflict in great detail, adding, "This was, you know, the worst genocide since World War II in Europe ... What were we all doing?

[27][28] Christiane Amanpour, a journalist who covered the Bosnian War for CNN, introduced the film at its New York premiere on December 5, 2011, calling it "remarkable and courageous".

The head of an association of mothers of Srebrenica massacre victims, Hatidža Mehmedović, who had earlier spoken out against Jolie after the media rumours regarding the film, said the final product was "really an excellent movie," "objective and sincere," and wanted to "thank Angelina for her intellectual and financial investment".

This film is a very strange attempt at tackling something you're absolutely clueless about; it would be like me writing a story about American suburbia using news reports as the basis.

[42] Though feeling In the Land of Blood and Honey "has you dreading to learn what atrocity awaits around the next corner", The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy also thinks Jolie "deserves significant credit for creating a powerfully oppressive atmosphere and staging the ghastly events so credibly.

"[43] Variety's Justin Chang penned a negative review of the movie, labeling it a "dramatically misguided attempt to renew public awareness of the 1992–95 Balkan conflict" that "springs less from artistic conviction than from an over-earnest humanitarian impulse."

"[44] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times has some issues with the way certain characters' dialogues are used as "short history lesson on the region that's clearly meant for the benefit of those watching the movie", but for the most part feels the movie "moves briskly and easily holds your attention, largely through a perverse love story that doesn't suffer for being such an obvious metaphor for the larger battle raging beyond Ajla and Danijel's relationship.

"[45] Jake Coyle of Associated Press wrote a negative review in which he gives Jolie some credit for "using her celebrity to bring attention to the dangers of pacifism in the face of war crimes and ethnic cleansing", but criticizes her for "a heavy-handed touch" as well as for "putting politics ahead of story and character, thus blatantly imposing a message, which results in a movie whose narrative feels like a fictionalized United Nations presentation."

"[46] Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News sees the biggest accomplishment of In the Land of Blood and Honey to be "the way it never loses sight of the closeness of the combatants, turning national intimacy into a tragic casualty."

However, "The Ajla/Danijel relationship is not always convincing, key plot points can feel contrived and the preponderance of Bosnian Serb bad guys comes off as schematic."

She dismisses the movie as "a United Nations extra-credit project about the Bosnian War" and criticizes Jolie for "producing a sanctimonious vanity commercial for her own good intentions.

Club refers to In the Land of Blood and Honey as "a film of shuddering earnestness and fevered good intentions gone awry, a dreary slog of a message movie with little but noble if unfulfilled aspirations to commend it."

He continues by opining that "Serbian groups have justifiably complained about Jolie's glib stereotyping of Serbs as racist heavies" before concluding that "Jolie has, after disastrously received 2003 message movie Beyond Borders, once again succeeded in attracting international attention to international atrocities and it's possible, if not particularly likely, that someday she will get around to dramatizing atrocities compellingly as well".

[50] Screen International's Howard Feinstein commended Jolie for "attempting to rectify the gross injustices perpetrated against the Muslims that were tolerated in the name of a mythological Greater Serbia, masterminded by Slobodan Milošević", while reproaching her for "going beyond acceptable dramatic license and presenting the Serbs as caricatures".

"[51] In the Dutch daily De Volkskrant, Bor Beekman slated In the Land of Blood and Honey as "messy, unnatural war porno" and gave the film one star out of five.