Monica Bellucci arrived yesterday in Bosnia to commence principal photography on a new film by Serbian director Emir Kusturica. The film is a love story in the time of war.

“Monica will be with us for about fifty days of shooting. My plan is to finish in November and for the film to be presented at the Cannes Film Festival next year,” Kusturica said yesterday at a press conference in Trebinje, Southern Bosnia. Most of the scenes featuring the Italian actress will be filmed here.

The film, entitled “Mlijecnom Na Putu” (“On the Milky Way”), is the first chapter of a trilogy whose starting point was a short film shot by the director two years ago inside a van, and in which Kusturica himself played an orthodox Christian monk. The director, who was born in Bosnia, will play the leading role in this new film, too.

Kusturica (who’s acted in more films than he’s directed, and is responsible, among others, for the remarkable “Time of Gypsies”) further commented that his new film is partly based on reality and fiction. It’s a story of love, and war, yes, but one which has a mythological dimension in which the role of the snake, present in the history of mankind since before the Old Testament, is very much at the fore.

Monica Bellucci (“Sanguepazzo”) will play a secret agent born of a Serbian father and an Italian mother. She’s a marked woman: a price has been placed on her head by the secret services. She falls in love with a man who crosses the frontlines daily to carry milk while feeding snakes on his way there.

“I am very motivated. Being part of this project provokes a great feeling in me. It will be very difficult, as any film is, but very intense. I’ll learn a lot about my work,” Monica Bellucci told reporters.

“This could be about any war since the subject [of the film], in fact, is human beings’ nature. Even if we talk about war, violence is something deeper, more spiritual,” she added.

Asked about his choice of Bellucci for the film Kusturica, who has not made a feature film in five years said, she is a “woman in the true sense of the term. Monica is very feminine, while the role she will play is exactly the opposite. Why Monica? That’s because at the moment there does not exist anyone else who would be more suitable for the role,” the director said.

SEE the online Kusturica Encyclopaedia