Woody Harrelson has said the dystopian world of The Hunger Games now looks like reality. He did not name a policy or a conflict, but the setting in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, where his 1997 movie about reporters under siege was being screened again, gave the wide-ranging rebuke unusual weight.
An audience member asked Harrelson during a 90-minute masterclass on 18 August whether Suzanne Collins’s fictional Panem resembled the present. The actor answered emphatically before adding: «I think what’s going on in the world and the American government’s participation in that is shameful,» Variety reported.
Harrelson played Haymitch Abernathy in the original Hunger Games films, which tell a story about government control, inequality and violence wrapped up as televised entertainment.
A prequel film, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, is due in cinemas on 20 November and returns to Haymitch’s youth, 24 years before the original story. Harrelson told the Sarajevo audience that he admired Collins’s latest book, which inspired the film.
Why Sarajevo setting matters
Harrelson was in the Bosnian capital to receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo. The ceremony was followed by a 35mm screening of Michael Winterbottom’s Welcome to Sarajevo at the same open-air venue where it had been shown during the festival in 1997, according to the organisers.
Based on war correspondent Michael Nicholson’s Natasha’s Story, the film follows international journalists covering the siege of Sarajevo and confronting the limits of detached reporting. It premiered at Cannes before playing at the third Sarajevo Film Festival later that year. The festival’s retrospective notes that Harrelson portrayed American television reporter Flynn.
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The actor spent more of his Sarajevo session discussing Brothers, his forthcoming reunion with Matthew McConaughey. He cautioned viewers not to expect another True Detective:
«If you like ‘True Detective’ and you want more of that, it’s not this,» Harrelson joked while taking a sip of Irish whisky. «I started ruminating on this and thought it would make a pretty cool show,» he added. Apple confirmed the eight-part series will begin its global release on 23 September.
