Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood writes in a recent article of the furore that's been kicked up over Angelina Jolie's latest project - which happens to be her debut as a director. Jolie has been in Europe over the last couple of months filming her still untitled directorial debut - a love story that she wrote about a Bosnian Muslim woman and a Serbian man. Tough stuff to begin with, but the shoot has not been easy politically.
First, she couldn't get the permit to film in Sarajevo. Then, she got the permit (because the culture minister read the script and approved it) and was supposed to film there for 10 days, however protests caused the time to be cut back. Controversy continued and Jolie pulled out from going to Sarajevo and was going to have the second unit director handle that segment.
Silverstein wonders if all this controversy is all because the project belongs to a woman. She notes "I'm not a fan of people being bullied out of doing their job before seeing the script, especially with the track record that Jolie has on issues related to refugees. This is Angelina Jolie we are talking about here - a woman who has dedicated her life to making the world aware of issues that are so easily ignored. This is not Roman Polanski making a film about date rape."