The Berlin Film Festival has never been shy of tackling the big issues of the day. And this year is no exception, with the major theme of next month's Berlinale program the global financial turmoil that has pushed the international economy into a major slowdown, sent banks to the wall and played havoc with ordinary people's lives.
Opening the festival - one of the world's top three international film festivals - is an action thriller by German-born director Tom Tykwer about the illegal activities of the world's biggest banks. The International stars Clive Owen as an Interpol agent and Naomi Watts as a New York attorney who risk their lives in trying to investigate the bank's business, which includes financing wars and terror.
"The opening film sets the tone for the festival," Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick told journalists in Berlin, adding that the scale of the financial crisis gripping the international economy had turned what is essentially a feature film into something approaching a documentary.
Coming in the middle of a bleak Berlin winter, the 10-day festival provides a touch of glamour and glitz to the German capital with the 59th Berlinale rolling out the red carpet for a slew of world stars his includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Demi Moore, Renee Zellweger, Kate Winslett, Steve Martin, Keanu Reeves, Gael Garca Bernal and Joe Dellesandro.
Sometimes described as the most beautiful man in underground movies, the 60-year-old Dellesandro, who starred as a hulky sexual presence in several Andy Warhol movies during the 1960's and 1970's is to receive a special Berlinale prize for lifetime achievement in gay cinema.
A large selection of the films to be screened at the Berlinale might focus on what is essentially the human fallout from the financial firestorm that has recently swept the world economy as well as fast-paced globalisation. "We see both the victims and the perpetrators (of the global upheaval)," Kosslick told a Berlinale pres conference Tuesday.
But those attending the festival are also likely to find some escape from the current global gloom with a batch of comedies and more romantic tales also having been included in the program. Apart from The Pink Panther 2 starring Steve Martin and Andy Garcia, movies such as British director Stephen Frears' Cheri about the life of a famed courtesan in 1920's France has also been selected for the festival's main competition.
Of the 26 films selected to be shown in the festival's main line-up, 17 are world premieres and include productions from China, Britain, Iran, Poland, Uruguay and the United States. An international jury headed up by Academy Award-winning British actress Tilda Swinton will decide who takes home the Berlinale's prestigious prizes, including its coveted Golden Bear.
More than 6,000 films were submitted to this year's Berlinale, which is the first big international film festival of the year. Coming at the start of the year marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of communism across Central Europe, this year's Berlinale also includes a series of movies touching on the years surrounding the end of the Soviet empire.
This year's Berlinale also roughly coincides with the end of the Bush era in US politics and the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House. But while the presidency of George W Bush has a produced a mini- industry in films, from movies about the Iraq war to others about Abu Ghraib prison as well as life in the Bush White House, film makers are only just start to turn to Obama and his political pop star appeal.
Festival organisers had thought of including a movie about the new US president. However, they said it had not been ready in time for the festival. But acknowledging that a new era in US politics had now begun, the Berlinale had also moved to step back from looking at the daily horrors of the Iraq war to portray the conflict's impact on the home front and the human costs of the war.
This includes Israeli-born Oren Moverman's The Messenger starring Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson. It tells the story of the army representatives who are assigned to visit families to inform of the grim news that their relatives have died in combat.
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