Angelina Jolie makes her directing debut with a powerful drama set amid the “ethnic cleansing” of the Bosnian War. The drama, and another film on the atrocities in Bosnia, are drawn from true stories of brutality toward women in that 1990′s conflict.

“Who were you …before the war?” asks Serbian commander Danijel of his captive, a Muslim woman named Ajila from Sarajevo. Their complicated relationship plays out during In The Land of Blood and Honey, written and directed by actress and human rights activist Angelina Jolie.

“I just wanted to tell a story about human beings from all sides and how war affects them,” explains Jolie.

Her visits to refugee camps and war zones as United Nations goodwill ambassador motivated Jolie to research and write the script about the systematic rapes and murders during the Bosnian conflict.

“When I started to look into it and I traveled to the region, I felt that I should have known more. This was in my generation and how do I not know enough? And why did it take us so long? Then at some point there was this script and it just sat on my desk for a while until Brad saw it one day and convinced me to show it to somebody and try,” Jolie says. » Read more: Hollywood Films Focus on Women Abused in Bosnian War