 Danijel (Goran Kostiæ) and Ajla (pronounced Ayla) (Zana Marjanoviæ) are two Bosnians from different sides of a brutal ethnic conflict. Danijel, a Bosnian Serb police officer, and Ajla, a Bosnian Muslim artist, are together before the war, but their relationship is changed as violence engulfs the country. Months later, Danijel is serving under his father, General Nebojsa Vukojevich (Rade Šerbedzija), as an officer in the Bosnian Serb Army. He and Ajla come face to face again when she is taken from the apartment she shares with her sister, Lejla (Vanesa Glodjo), and Lejla's infant child by troops under Danijel's command. As the conflict takes hold of their lives, their relationship changes, their motives and connection to one another become ambiguous and their allegiances grow uncertain.
For almost five decades after World War II, the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina formed part of Yugoslavia, alongside the Republics of Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Macedonia, and the semi-autonomous Serbian provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina. During this time, a rich web of ethnic and religious identities made Bosnia's population of 4 million one of the most diverse in Europe. Bosnian Muslims formed the largest part of the population, followed by Serbs, Croats, and other groups. All spoke the same language, and intermarriage was common.
Following the death in 1980 of Marshall Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia's long-serving communist leader, previously suppressed tensions between and within the republics began to surface. As economic troubles mounted in Yugoslavia, nationalist leaders gained power, including Franjo Tu?man in Croatia and Slobodan Miloševiæ in Serbia. Miloševiæ proceeded to consolidate Serbian control over the Yugoslav government and army, further alienating the other republics. Following the collapse of Communist regimes elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina declared their independence from Yugoslavia.
The Bosnian War erupted in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs, backed by the Yugoslav Army, occupied towns and cities in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina and laid siege to Sarajevo, the capital, in an attempt to carve out a separate and ethnically pure "Republic of Serbs.” Bosnian Croats, backed by Croatia, also sought to establish their own republic in western Bosnia-Herzegovina, although they would sometimes join with the mostly Muslim Bosnian forces against the Serbs. Early in the Bosnian conflict, a United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) arrived to stop the wider war, but they failed to halt the descent into violence.
The war would become the most devastating conflict in Europe since World War II. Between 1992 and 1995, fighting claimed the lives of approximately 100,000 people and drove more than 2 million people from their homes, as refugees or internally displaced persons. In a pattern of "ethnic cleansing," militias attacked and expelled civilians in areas under their control to create ethnically pure enclaves. Men and women were often separated and families were split. Many Bosnians of all ethnicities left the country; others were taken into captivity and abused. In one town, Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb forces massacred more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys.
Throughout the war, as many as 20,000 to 50,000 women were raped, many while in captivity. In response, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia would eventually indict 161 persons of all ethnicities for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide during the Bosnian War and would become the first tribunal to prosecute rape as an independent crime against humanity. The last remaining fugitive from the ICTY was captured in July 2011, and 35 cases remain pending as of November 2011.
Decisive military intervention by NATO and intense diplomatic pressure eventually led to a cease fire and the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. Since then, an uneasy peace has prevailed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but divisions created by the conflict remain, and the struggle for reconciliation continues.
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 In the Land of Blood and Honey
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