Angelina Jolie has been named an honorary citizen of Sarajevo for her 2011 film “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”
Sarajevo’s regional government credited the film Jolie wrote and directed with bringing awareness to the three-year Bosnian War, which began in 1992.
Each year the government honors a foreign national for promoting humanity, democracy and tolerance. They chose Jolie for "keeping the truth about wartime events in Sarajevo and Bosnia-Hercegovina alive,” Us magazine reported.
“In the Land of Blood and Honey,” which was nominated for a Golden Globe, depicts a love story set against the background of the Bosnian War. In the film, a Bosnian Muslim woman and an Orthodox Christian Serbian man have an affair before the war, and meet again when the woman is a prisoner of her former lover’s army unit.
Jolie also won the “Heart of Sarajevo” award at the Sarajevo Film Festival last year.
In addition to using her film background to bring awareness to the Bosnian War, Jolie has spent the last decade using her celebrity to tackle global issues as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations.
Jolie was promoted this month to special envoy of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
Last weekend, she was spotted in Ecuador visiting Colombian refugees and staying in the Galapagos Islands with her family and new fiancée, Brad Pitt.
Jolie has been invited to a ceremony in Sarajevo on May 3 to officially celebrate her honorary citizenship. She has yet to respond to the invite.
Selected Reading: Us Magazine, Angelina Jolie, IMDB
