Hollywood heartthrob Gere in hunt for Karadzic in new movie

SARAJEVO, Saturday (AFP)

Hollywood star Richard Gere is to travel to Bosnia later this month to star in a new movie about the hunt for top war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic, a local production company said Saturday.

In “Flak Jacket” Gere is to play a journalist who is trying to discover the whereabouts of Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader wanted by the UN war crimes court, a Scout Film representative told local media.

The journalist runs into problems when the local population starts to suspect that he is a CIA agent.

Shooting is due to start on September 12 in Sarajevo and several other locations in Bosnia as well as in neighbouring Croatia, Edo Sarkic of Scout Film said.

However, he declined to reveal who will play Karadzic, who has been indicted by the UN tribunal in The Hague on genocide charges.

Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic are wanted in connection with the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslim males, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

More than 11 years on, both men remain at large and are believed to be hiding in Serbia and Serb-controlled parts of Bosnia.
Apart from Gere, Richard Shepard’s movie will also star Hollywood actor Terrence Howard as Gere’s cameraman, and Jesse Eisenberg.

The film is based on an article written by Scott Anderson, a US journalist who reported on Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war for the Esquire magazine.