Abstract
This paper addresses the representation of violence in the film In the Land of Blood and
Honey, which was directed by Angelina Jolie (2011). Internationally hailed, awarded but also hugely
criticized, the film purports to be about rape camps where Muslim women were held and assaulted
by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian war. However, the film merges the story of rape camps
with a story about a (sexual) relationship between an incarcerated Muslim woman and a Serb camp
commander. Our paper analyzes the cinematic tools used to tell these two stories, focusing on what is
referred to as borrowing, and suggests that Jolie borrowed liberally to tell her story. The article focuses
on three types of borrowing, cinematic, literary and experiential, and looks at three visual cinematic
tropes obtained from Holocaust movies, Cold War movies, and ex-Yugoslav cinematic productions.
It is concluded that the film recycles an already largely discarded narrative of “a history of ethnic
hatred” as prime cause of war in the former Yugoslavia. The film’s director thus misses an
opportunity to challenge the ethnicization of the region – something many local film directors have
already successfully achieved.