Remarkably accurate. A truly outstanding movie.

Rating: 10/10 (13 February 2012)

This movie tells the painfully true story, which has not quite been told. The story of torture and of systematic rape during the Bosnian war. The story is not easy to tell, especially in a short movie, but Jolie proves to be an incredibly skillful first time director. What I especially liked, is that at the end of the movie, we see that Ajla, one of the protagonists, is not just an innocent Bosniak girl in love with her captor; the audience gets a glimpse of Ajla's hatred for the man she is portrayed as having a love relationship with, through the entire movie.
Angelina has been stating in interviews that she never intended to direct a movie, when she decided to learn more about the Bosnian war. What she learned had affected her deeply, as it should be the case for any human being, and it really shows in how well the movie depicts the story. In an incredibly thoughtful way, Jolie selected the cast of new and celebrity actors, mainly of Serbian ethnic origin, with whom she worked closely in creating the movie and representing the story of the war. Nearly everyone has heard of the war in Bosnia and the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims. It was being documented on the front line news as it was happening, with the world not intervening, as had been the case with Rawanda, and later Sudan. However the details of the horrific torture and rape, still remain under-reported.
I work as a medical doctor in Canada, where I completed my medical education. Today, while seeing a consult in the hospital where I work, I happened to see a young patient whose mother and father had both been in separate concentration camps in Bosnia, the Serbian militia run camps. Her mother, a Bosnian Croat, was there, with the patient. She told me about suffering of post-traumatic stress disorder for many years, and of years of ineffective therapy, including Etc. Of watching her husband, a Muslim, suffer, until suddenly falling ill and dying of cancer recently; he had refused any mental health care or pharmacological treatment here in Canada, for his psychological trauma. She spoke about how they were forced on buses,of what happened to the rest of her family, as if it had just happened yesterday. She only mentioned that she had lived through horror, it was all in response to my question of whether there was any family history of mental health issues. I had just recently seen "In the Land of Blood and Honey", and as this woman was speaking to me, I almost told her about having watched the movie made about her story. Of course, I could not say something like that. This woman was weeping as she talked about her life. She seemed to get lost in that past, as she talked.
It made me think of how sad it is, for these people who have been uprooted, having lived in a rural Bosnian town for generations, and coming here to where there would be peace, but where they would never find peace. They came here not knowing anybody, in a strange new land, not being able to speak the language, and unable to use the skills they had been able to make living on, back in Bosnia.
I then saw these reviews and was saddened to see how the Serbian extremists are still vocal. Although there still exist Nazis and skinheads, the Holocoust has been acknowledged long ago,and not only officially, by the German people. This happened soon after the WWII. When, and will this ever be the case with the Serbian population at large?
In the movie, the Bosnian Muslims are often referred to as " the Turks", a derogatory label, by the Serbian soldiers. Bosnian people are not descendants of the Ottoman Turks, although, personally, being of Bosniak ethnicity, I would have nothing against having Turkish roots, or for that matter,roots of any other origin. There was no motive for this war, or for the ethnic cleansing that went on, aside from the sheer hatred, cruelty and the crazed nationalism and extremism. From a rational perspective, it would have made more sense if the Serbs had started killing random Turkish citizens in Turkey, to avenge having to live under the Ottoman empire rule for centuries. Of course, as absurd as this sounds it would make more sense. The only crime of the the Bosnian Muslims victims is that they were Muslim. And, yes, the principal victims of the war and the ethnic cleansing were the Bosnian Muslims, of whom at least 100, 000 were killed (though the figure is often minimized), but also millions exiled and uprooted. It is untrue and absurd to say that ethnic cleansing " was committed by all sides", as some reviewers here claim. It is not difficult to understand and know this. It is impressive, that of all people, Angelina Jolie, has made this important movie, and told the hardly believable, but true story of Bosnian women's war experience.