Actress Angelina Jolie arrives on the red carpet for the screening of the film "The Tree of Life", by director Terrence Malick, in competition at the 64th Cannes Film Festival, May 16, 2011.[Photo/Agencies]

Angelina Jolie's directorial debut -- a controversial movie set in wartime Bosnia -- has a name and a release date.

"In the Land of Blood and Honey" will be released in the United States on December 23, producers said in a statement on Monday, just in time for Oscar consideration.

"The film is specific to the Bosnian War, but it's also universal," Jolie said in a statement. "I wanted to tell a story of how human relationships and behavior are deeply affected by living inside a war."

Jolie, who also wrote the screenplay, last year described the then untitled movie as a love story between a Serbian man and a Bosnian woman on the eve of the 1992-95 Balkans conflict, in which 100,000 people died.

But it caused controversy in Bosnia with some female victims of sexual violence objecting to details in the plot and Bosnian authorities canceling a filming permit. As a result, some scenes scheduled to be shot in Sarajevo were moved to Budapest, Hungary.

Jolie, who won a supporting actress Oscar for "Girl, Interrupted", and who is a United Nations goodwill ambassador, has asked the people of Bosnia to withhold judgment until they see the completed film.

"In the Land of Blood and Honey" features a local cast, and was shot in both the English and Serbo-Croat languages.

Producers Graham King and Tim Headington on Monday called it a "bold new film (which) illustrates the consequences of the lack of political will to intervene in a society stricken with conflict."