Angelina Jolie was robbed: I talk to her about on catharsis in ‘First They Killed My Father,’ and working with her son: Awards Season Spotlight Profile https://t.co/JuWHMYgkvX via @indiewire

— Anne Thompson (@akstanwyck) January 27, 2018

IndieWire Awards Spotlight: Angelina Jolie on making 'First They Killed My Father,' "It could be traumatic, or it could be cathartic. And we insisted it would be cathartic" https://t.co/zobBrsM7qK @XFINITY pic.twitter.com/cPuEwplR2l

— IndieWire (@IndieWire) January 27, 2018

Jude Dry

“First They Killed My Father,” Angelina Jolie’s gripping drama about a child surviving the Khmer Rouge, is the actress-turned-director’s finest film to date. The movie was rejected by the Oscars, receiving no nominations, though it was Cambodia’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film — a fact that in no way diminishes the artistry and power of the film Jolie crafted from Cambodian author and activist’s Loung Ung’s best-selling memoir of the same name. The story had deep personal resonance; Jolie’s son, Maddox, is Cambodian by birth. The director said she felt a great responsibility to get the story right — not just for her son, but for all Cambodians.

When you’re a director, you don’t wanna feel you’ve let down your team, or you’ve let down the country, or you’ve let down the family,” Jolie said in an interview for IndieWire’s Spotlight Awards series. It was her son Maddox, who at 16 years old now has his first producer credit for the movie, who suggested she make “First They Killed My Father.” “[He] was the reason we finally did it,” she added.

“The majority of our crew were survivors… So everybody was affected,” Jolie said. “It could be traumatic, or it could be cathartic, and we insisted it would be cathartic. It had to not be easy. Because we were fighting to make something that mattered, so it had to be a little difficult.”
The story follows Ung’s brutal childhood surviving the deadly Khmer Rouge in 1970s Cambodia; Ung adapted the script from her memoir. “[She] made it safe…for everybody to have their moments,” said Ung. “There were times we had to stop shooting, because people were suffering from post-traumatic stress, and Angie was great.”

Even if Jolie did not get the Oscar nod she was hoping for, “First They Killed My Father” was warmly received, and went a long way toward marking Jolie as a director with vision and skill. Not only is the movie an enormous accomplishment for a woman who wears many hats in Hollywood, but it’s a tale close to her heart. “This movie’s about family…It’s how warm it is, and what it means to have a family, and how that forms us, and how that helps us heal and survive.”
Heal, survive, and hopefully flourish.

This year’s Awards Spotlight series is produced with help from our partners at Xfinity, and filmed at the Variety Content Studio.

The Oscars nominations were announced on Tuesday and FTKMF did not make this list. We are still proud and thrilled. We made the film we wanted and made it with love and integrity. Thank you all for your support. Loung https://t.co/mMLLoDnqgu

— Loung Ung (@UngLoung) January 25, 2018

NBR with Ken Burns

IndieWire's Kohn

Reviews

December 18, 2011 | by Eric Kohn | 1 Comment

"In the Land of Blood and Honey" is a Surprisingly Effective Debut For Filmmaker Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie directs "In the Land of Blood and Honey." FilmDistrict

Arguably the most famous actress working today, Angelina Jolie has made third-world advocacy a major part of her brand. For the topic of her feature writing-directing debut, she choose the devastation of the nineties-era Bosnian War, an incursion largely forgotten in the West but still reverberating in the nightmares of the Bosnians who suffered through it. Certainly it matches her actor-activist interests and she can afford to put a camera wherever she wants. But does she know what to do with it?

It turns out the answer is, basically, yes. "In the Land of Blood and Honey" breaks no fresh ground in the tradition of staid, grim war dramas from which it hails, but Jolie successfully capitalizes on a juicy premise that finds Bosnia woman Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) falling into an affair with Danijel (Goran Kostic), the Serbian head of a prison camp where she's held captive. Working from her own screenplay, Jolie churns out a steadily involving, competently dramatic tale. The movie also stands out as a strong technical feat: Shot on location with an entirely Bosnian cast speaking Serbo-Croatian (although an English version was alternately shot), it thoroughly inhabits the period setting with a consistent feel for the cold, brutal events of its backdrop.

Set in 1992, "In the Land of Blood and Honey" begins with a blunt title card explaining that pre-war, Muslims, Serbs and Croats lived "in harmony," a sharp contrast to the discord that soon takes place. During a brief prologue, Jolie introduces her characters' initial courtship when Ajla and Danijel meet cute on the dance floor of a Bosnian club. Their perfect moment is cut short by the flash of an explosion announcing the beginning of the war. Suddenly, Danijel is a soldier following orders and Ajla is a woman in trouble. As bodies lie around them and the violence begins, Jolie completes her opening sequence with an effectively sharp turn into chaos.

The ensuing drama plays out like Paul Verhoeven's "Black Book" crossed with Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution," as Ajla avoids the brunt of prison camp life when Danijel hires her to draw portraits of the guards; meanwhile, she secretly helps rebel forces, including her sister, plan a counterattack. The couple's pillow talk implies that politics stay out of the bedroom, but Ajla's motives remain highly suspect when she decides to take on the role of double-agent. Danijel simultaneously struggles with a different conflict of interest, living in the shadow of his militant father's demands while falling for Ajla.

"In the Land of Blood and Honey." FilmDistrict

Aided by veteran cinematographer Dean Semler (responsible for lensing the grimy, violent images of "The Road Warrior" and  "Apocalypto," among many other credits), Jolie infuses her star-crossed romantic tragedy with gravitas, particularly with her unsettlingly upfront portrait of the soldiers' abuse of women. Her derivative plot lags at times, and the screenplay falters whenever the characters launch into prolonged discussions of their relative allegiances. "It's politics, not murder," Danijel tells Ajla, one of several one-liners that drag the movie down. But in these moments the movie's salvation comes from its two capable leads, whose focused performances carry some of the more problematic moments of half-baked theatricality.

The eventual fallout of their relationship arrives not with an explosive score or climactic shootout but through a few terse exchanges and one bullet. Jolie's morbid atmosphere suggests a restrained "Schindler's List," exploring national suffrage through a handful of personal experiences imbued with dread. She does right by the material, even though she never pushes it in a particularly fresh direction. An end credit deems the Bosnian war the deadliest since WWII and the most impressive thing about "In the Land of Blood and Honey" is that Jolie makes you feel it.

criticWIRE grade: B+

HOW WILL IT PLAY? Already nominated for a Golden Globe in the category of Best Foreign Film, "In the Land of Blood and Honey" presents a challenge for distributor FilmDistrict, which opens the movie in limited theatrical release this Friday ahead of a wider national release planned for January. Jolie's celebrity gives the movie tremendous visibility, but its grim historical backdrop and foreign language make it a harder sell to American audiences. However, Jolie's publicity for the film may help scrape by with a small profit during the January release, if not during the much smaller limited run this month.

Press Con Report

December 7, 2011 | by Eric Kohn | 

Angelina Jolie on Managing the Guilt and Politics of "In the Land of Blood and Honey"

Angelina Jolie in New York on Tuesday. Eric Kohn

Angelina Jolie got a crash course in Bosnian politics while shooting her directorial debut, "In the Land of Blood and Honey." Rumors swirled that the film set during the Bosnian War involved a rape victim falling in love with her attacker. Protests led the production to nearly lose its shooting permit and the actress-turned-filmmaker found herself having to set the record straight for Bosnia's cultural minister. When she returned to her shooting schedule, Jolie said she felt even closer to her all-Bosnian cast. "They said, 'Welcome to the area,'" she recalled.

"Nobody who had an issue with the film had read the script or knew what it was about," Jolie said during a press conference for the film yesterday in New York. "It was a fear of the unknown, I suppose."

Set for a limited release by FilmDistrict on December 23 ahead of a wider release in January, "In the Land of Blood and Honey" is the bleak tale of Aija (Zana Marjanovic), a Bosnian Muslim woman who has a brief romantic encounter with Serbian soldier Danijel (Goran Kostic) before the war. Later, Danijel develops into a fierce soldier but manages to keep Ajila safe in the prison camp he runs. While their affair behind closed doors courts danger, the movie's extends beyond forbidden love to explore the ubiquitous sense of claustrophobia and danger experienced by Bosnians at the time.

Underscoring that point, Tuesday's press conference was moderated by longtime NPR journalist Tom Gjelten, who spoke of his experiences covering the war. "This really is the way it was," he told a roomful of journalists, citing the film's depictions of cramped detention camps and forced evacuations in the film. He then asked a number of Serbian castmembers to share their war stories, leading to a dour series of testimonials that took the focus off the star director and turned the experience into something closer to a focus group.

Those stories, of course, were precisely what drew Jolie to the material. A teenager during the Bosnian war, she only recognized the depth of trauma it caused for countless Bosnians later in life. "When I first approached the film, I never planned to direct anything," she said. "I had been haunted for years by the lack of intervention people face in conflict."

Research about the war brought an immediacy to her concerns. "It was a war of my generation and something I felt a responsibility to write about," she said. "The more I learned about it, the more I was overwhelmed by the guilt of how little I knew." To prepare for the movie, she spoke with many war survivors. "It was very hard and emotional," she said.

"Blood and Honey" sports a grim tone that places it alongside other dark historical dramas about war, torture and societal oppression in general. More surprisingly, the movie has genuine production values rather than the first-time amateurishness some viewers might expect from a global celebrity with the power to make the movie on her own terms.

Angelina Jolie directs "In the Land of Blood and Honey." FilmDistrict

Jolie said her work with countless top-tier directors helped her prepare for the experience. She cited Clint Eastwood, who cast her in"Changeling," as her primary mentor. "He taught me a lot about working with people you love," she said. "He's also very fast. I had to learn about the economy of a shoot and a budget." She also mentioned her experience with Michael Winterbottom on "A Mighty Heart." "The way he set the tone made it feel real," she said. "He allowed a lot of room for the actors to create something that wasn't pushed on them."

Jolie managed to do that by allowing her actors to speak in their native language. (While they also recorded their dialogue in English, the Bosnian version will hit U.S. theaters.) The bigger challenge, however, was shooting scenes of rough violence. Jolie mentioned an early moment where Serbian soldiers line up their women captives and proceed to rape them. "As a director, I didn't want to ask women to do that," she said. "I felt that I was torturing them myself, so I kept apologizing and telling them that they were doing a great service to other women. It was much harder for the men that were there. This was not their nature."

But she made peace with the scene, she said, because she felt the movie addressed bigger issues. "It's not simply about violence against women," she said. "It's about how human beings break down when surrounded by such horror, ugliness and hate. Even decent people are broken. I did this so we would have these questions and discuss wars around the world today -- and what could happen tomorrow."

She said it wasn't a duty she took lightly. "You feel a huge pressure and responsibility for this very real, difficult part of history," she said. "I still feel that pressure." Her closeness to the material was evident when she bristled at a question about early comparisons of the movie's plot to "Romeo and Juliet." She called it "an oversimplification," adding, "I think we all know that story as people from opposite sides who find their way to each other. This is two people from the same side who are then told they are different and cannot be together. It's the opposite."

Ducking easy hooks for her movie, Jolie made it clear that the commercial prospects for a project of this nature are dicey. Asked if she wanted to work on other difficult projects, she replied, "We had a very low budget, so we're starting at a good base." It was the rare moment where she allowed herself to laugh. "The success was being able to get this made," she said. "I hope people see it as a piece of art as well. I hope the actors involved are acknowledged for being extraordinary. My fingers are crossed for that."