Berlin Film Festival opens today
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-02-09 09:03

The first important film event of the year is gearing up to roll out the red carpet this week for some of the world’s top stars and to showcase 19 premieres in its main programme.

In its 56th year, the festival opens with German-born director Marc Evans’ “Snow Cake,” a drama starring Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman and depicting the friendship between an autistic woman and a man traumatized after a fatal car accident. Both London-born Rickman and America’s Weaver are among the star-studded guests who are expected for this year’s Berlin festival, which is one of the world’s top three movie fests. Other stars and directors expected to make their way to Berlin also include Isabelle Huppert, Gael Garcia Bernal, Isabella Rossellini, George Clooney, Heath Ledger, Meryl Streep and John Hurt. Coming as Berlin’s cold grey winter months grind on, the festival’s annual glamour offensive helps to give the German capital a touch of glitz amid the gloom of February. Renowned British actress Charlotte Rampling is to head the international jury, which draws together eight key figures from the movie business in the US, Europe and Asia.

Recognising the booming worldwide interest in Bollywood movies, the Berlinale has included in the jury leading Indian producer and director Yash Chopra. Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick insists that festival goers will find something they are interested in among the 360 movies to be shown in the 10-day fest’s main sections. “Whoever wants sex, will get sex, whoever wants politics will get politics and whoever wants football should also expect it to be in the programme,” said Kosslick.

That said, however, many of the 26 films selected for the festival’s main competition are dominated by movies which are as Kosslick said “very political and close to reality”.

But then, the Berlin film festival has never shied away from controversial issues, with directors of the films included in this year’s programme taking a tough look at issues such as rape, war, political repression and sexuality.

“The Road To Guantanamo “by directors Michael Winterbottom and Matt Whitecross, traces three Muslims from Great Britain who were held without being charged at Guantanamo Bay prison camp for two years. The line-up of films to be shown in Berlin also includes movies by legendary American directors Terrence Malick and Robert Altman, whose new film A Prairie Home Companion is likely to offer some light relief in the festival line-up. The New World, the long-awaited new film by Malick, the director of Badlands, Days Of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, and starring Colin Farrell, is to be shown out of competition. As for Romanians, they are rather well represented in this year’s edition.

Romanian tennis legend Ilie Nastase will play a former tennis star in a German film entitled “Montag kommen die Fenster” (Windows on Monday), which will premiere Friday at the Berlin International Film Festival.

The 37 year old director’s film has been selected for the same section of the Berlin festival as two Romanian films, “Tertium non Datur,” by Lucian Pintilie and “Visul lui Liviu” (Liviu’s Dream) by Corneliu Porumboiu.