There are 70,000 Bosnian immigrants in the St Louis area, mostly in working-class enclaves on the south side. While few of their neighbors understand the circumstances that brought these refugees to America, they've got an ally in Hollywood: Angelina Jolie.

For her feature directorial debut, "In the Land of Blood and Honey," the actress and human-rights advocate has used a fictional romance to dramatize the ethnic cleansing of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War of the early '90s. It's an unflinching film that provoked strong reactions when it premiered on the coasts in December. The local Wehrenberg chain opens today at its Ronnies Cine, with some encouragement from U.S. congressman Russ Carnahan and a local-media push by the director. But in a phone interview thius week, Jolie acknowledged that many Bosnians may not be ready to revisit the war, in which Muslims were ousted by forces loyal to neighboring Serbia.

"The Bosnians' reluctance is understandable," she said. "I was nervous the first time we showed it to victims of the war, not just because their reaction was important to shaping the film, but because I knew it was bringing up painful memories for them and I didn't want them to suffer through it for two hours. I made the film to educate people who don't know about the war."

Documenting the causes and casualties of the war is a daunting challenge for historians, let alone a novice screenwriter and director. Some people from the former Yugoslavia trace the ethnic and religious conflicts to World War II or even to the the incursion of Turks in the Middle Ages.

After the death of unifying dictator Josip Tito and the subsequent end of communism, old rivalries re-emerged, and the relatively stable melting pot of Bosnia-Hervegovina was fractured along tribal lines. Orthodox Christian Serbs, Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims (sometimes called Bosniaks) fought for control of the state. The Bosnian loyalists were outgunned, and in the worst carnage on European soil in half a century, thousands of civilians were raped and murdered.

Only after NATO waged a bombing campaign did the numerous forces come to the negotiating table. Today, a fragile peace prevails in Sarajevo, the city that hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, but thousands of Bosnians live in exile, in places such as St. Louis.

Some Bosnians are ethnic Serbs and are among the critics who have called "In the Land of Blood and Honey" one-sided. But Jolie, who works as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, says that passionate disagreements go with the territory.

"There are many different sides to the conflict, and even within those sides there are extreme differences in viewpoint. To find a respectful balance between those viewpoints was a challenge.

"Of course, this film is a dramatic interpretation and not everyone is going to agree with it, but there are a lot of Serbs who support the movie because they recognize that there is humanity on both sides. And I wouldn't have made the film without Serbs in the cast and crew."

That crew proved invaluable for the novice director, who shot the film in Hungary on a limited budget. "I've got six kids, so I was used to multitasking," she said, " but I learned something new every day, starting with how to look through the camera.

"I've had experiences on film sets where people worked together and were kind to each other, and I've had other experiences where it was hierarchical and people were rude to each other, so I was very careful in picking a crew that was not only talented but some of the nicest people in the business. They all took pay cuts because they wanted to tell this story.

"For the past few years, there was a part of me that was wanting to move away from making films. I was not enjoying the process. But every day I would arrive on this set that was filled with kind, committed people and I would think: This life can be so beautiful."