Berlin Film Festival announces competition films

BERLIN (Reuters) – The Berlin Film Festival announced on
Tuesday the first seven films in the running for its Golden and
Silver Bears awards in February along with two U.S. films that
will be screened out of competition.

“Syriana,” a political thriller starring George Clooney,
and “The New World” with Colin Farrell about a 17th century
English explorer, are the two U.S. films featured in the
26-film main program for the 56th annual Berlinale that runs
February 9-19.

Both “Syriana” and “The New World” were already released in
the U.S. but have been included in the festival that hopes to
attract the celebrity actors of those and other films.

Six of the nine films selected so far will have their world
premieres in Berlin. The rest of the program will be announced
by mid-January, according to festival director Dieter Kosslick.

“We are extremely pleased to be able to present new films
by famous directors as well as productions by young
filmmakers,” he said in a statement.

The Berlinale is the first of Europe’s three major
festivals in the new year and considered after Cannes and
alongside Venice to be one of the world’s most prestigious film
showcases.

Making the Berlin festival unique are the 400,000 tickets
sold to about 1,000 screenings of films in the competition and
various sidebar events to ordinary cinema-goers, many of whom
spend hours in long queues for tickets.

Two German directors will be competing for honors with
world premieres. Oskar Roehler will present his adaptation of
Michel Houellebecq’s successful novel “The Elementary
Particles” about two brothers set out to uncover the meaning of
life.

Another German film, “Requiem” by Hans-Christian Schmid, is
about exorcism in the West Germany in the 1970s.

Australia is represented with Neil Armfield’s “Candy” about
a young couple who become involved in drugs while a
British-Canadian co-production “Snow Cake” is about a difficult
love story that stars Sigourney Weaver.

Two films from Asia are in the program: a psychological
thriller “Invisible Waves” by Thai director Ratanaruang Pen-ek
portrays a contract killer; Chen Kaige’s “Wu ji” (“The
Promise”) is a love story of a princess between three men and
at $35 million is called the most expensive Chinese film ever
made.

Last year “U-Carmen eKhayelitsha,” a film that transports
Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen” to a South African township,
became the first African film to win Berlin’s coveted Golden
Bear for best film.

German actress Julia Jentsch won the Silver Bear for best
actress for her portrayal of Sophie Scholl, a real-life heroine
of the German resistance during World War Two who was executed
by the Nazis.