The Berlinale Turns 60

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Wednesday, 10 February 2010 21:21

Written by Laura Blum

The Berlin International Film Festival, running February 11 to 21, hits the big Six-O this year. Set in the capital of Germany, the "Berlinale," as it's popularly dubbed, holds an exalted place in the pantheon of film festivals. Not only is it known as a hotbed of quality work, but, with nearly 500,000 annual admissions, it's also said to be the largest publicly-attended cinema showcase.

This year's edition kicks off with the world premiere of Apart Together (Tuan Yuan), about a former soldier who returns to Shanghai to seek his 1949 love. Attending Berlin's birthday celebration will be the film's Chinese director and 2007 Golden Bear winner, Wang Quan'an, as well as key cast members.

That's more than can be said of Polish-French director Roman Polanski, whose new thriller, The Ghost Writer, will have its world premiere on February 12, but who is serving his sixth month of house arrest in Switzerland.

That the 70-something Oscar-winner remains mired in a child rape case decades older than the victim is now partly explains the hum surrounding this story of a writer (Ewan McGregor) who tripwires over a global conspiracy while penning the former British premier's (Pierce Brosnan, channeling Tony Blair) memoirs.Is it just me, or does this sound like another law-of-the-jungle misadventure from German filmmaker and this year's Head of the Jury, Werner Herzog?

Also from the legal and moral murk comes Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl, with actor James Franco as beat poet Allen Ginsberg during the 1957 obscenity trial involving his publisher. Other US contenders for first prize include Noah Baumbach's Greenberg, starring Ben Stiller in an adult coming-of-age tale set in Manhattan. Playing out of competition is a Cold War-era thriller from Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island. Dennis Lehane's novel provides the brief for a U.S. marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio), who probes a psychiatric prisoner's sudden disappearance.
 
From the UK, there's The Killer Inside of Me, about a Texan deputy sheriff who turns out to be a  homicidal maniac. (Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM] was published on the eve of the Festival.) The thriller by 1995 Golden Bear nominee Michael Winterbottom stars Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Bill Pullman and Jessica Alba. 
 
Hollywood won't be the only star system to twinkle in Berlin. Bollywood nova Shah Rukh Khan is expected to dazzle his Berlinale fans with My Name Is Khan, about an Indian Muslim facing down prejudice in post 9/11 America. (It opens in the U.S. February 12.) Shahada echoes similar themes in its portrait of young Muslims living and struggling in Berlin.
 
Europe is represented by Mammuth, with Gerard Depardieu as the lead, and Thomas Vinterberg's newest work, Submarino. 
 
In addition to Apart Together, Chinese productions gracing the Festival include A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop, from Golden Bear-winning director Zhang Yimou, and the latest Jackie Chan kung-fu comedy.
 
As ever, the Berlinale will screen classic works from the archives. This year, audiences will see a restored version of Fritz Lang's original 1927 silent film, Metropolis, thanks to the 2008 discovery of a negative containing scenes that had been long been considered lost.
 
The Festival, which runs through February 21, will woo young viewers with "Generation," one of three out-of-competition events. Presented in collaboration with the Berlinale Talent Campus, the slate spans Ghanian/Kenyan director Hawa Essuman's Soul Boy; Helmut Dziuba's Sabine Kleist, 7 Jahre; and a cleaned up version of the documentary Nuremberg: Its Lesson For Today.
 
Themes of "family and reunions" undergird many of this year's films, explained Festival director Dieter Kosslick. Right on time for the new DSM....

For more info and a complete schedule: http://www.berlinale.de/en/HomePage.htm


Berlin International Film Festival
Feb. 11 - 21 2010
Potsdamer Straße 5
10785 Berlin
Germany
phone +49 · 30 · 259 20 · 0
fax +49 · 30 · 259 20 · 299
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