Jolie shared how she came to be the director for “In the Land of Blood and Honey” during a conversation at The Hollywood Reporter’s “The Directors” roundtable. The actress explained that it wasn’t until she stepped behind the camera that she learned how much she loved directing.
“I got into this accidentally. I wanted to learn more about the war in Yugoslavia, so I wrote something that was a project; it was really private, I didn’t think that I was going to show anybody. It was this little script that I used as an excuse to send myself back to school and study a time in history. Then somebody said it’s not that bad, it should be a film.”
The performer further expressed that she only took up the director’s job because she was afraid someone else’s vision would alter the film in a manner she didn’t want. She volunteered to direct and, in the process, fell in love with the job.
She added, “I was so excited, and then the idea of who would direct it came up, and I was worried that it would be turned into something else by somebody else, and so I volunteered to direct it. I thought, ‘Ugh, what am I doing?’ It was just to protect the material, and then I realized that I loved it.”