Monday, February 5----While the Berlin Film Festival, which opens on Thursday evening, is certainly an international affair, it has traditionally been one of the important showcases for new European cinema. With a French film opening the prestigious Berlinale Competition section (LA VIE EN ROSE by Olivier Dahan) and top-flight French and UK films included this year (see earlier stories), the rest of Europe gets equal billing as the Festival presents mainly world premieres from some of Europe's most distinguished film talents.

IRINA PALM (a German/Belgium/Luxembourg/Britain/France co-production) by Belgian director Sam Gabarski, has its world premiere in the Competition section. The film stars singer/actress Marianne Faithful as a desperate widow who unwittingly accepts a job in a sex club. The film is shot in the grungy neighborhood of Soho, London's last remaining red light district. The euro-production was jointly produced by production companies Entre Chien et Loup (Belgium), Ipso Facto (UK), Liaison Cinématographique (France), Pallas Film (Germany) and Samsa Film (Luxembourg).

Two-time Oscar winner Bille August (PELLE THE CONQUEROR) returns to the Berlinale after a ten year absence (his last was 1997's SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW) with GOODBYE BAFANA, about the relationship between a prison guard and his prisoner, the future President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. The film, shot in the actual locations of the story in South Africa, stars English actor Joseph Fiennes (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) as the guard and American actor Dennis Haysbert (FAR FROM HEAVEN) as Nelson Mandela. The English-language film is another euro-production from Belgium/France/UK/Germany and South Africa, and is being represented internationally by United International Pictures.

Celebrated Italian director Saverio Costanzo, whose 2004 film PRIVATE was an international arthouse hit, is represented at the Berlinale Competition with IN MEMORIA DI ME (In Memory of Myself), a powerful study of a young monk who doubts his vocation. The film, which is shot in the atmospheric quarters of Venice, is being sold internationally by French sales company Scalpel Films.

Jirí Menzel is a European film treasure, with nearly 70 films to his credit in a career that has spanned more than four decades. Beginning in the 1960s, as part of the Czech New Wave movement, Menzel made the memorable CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS (1966), which won the 1968 Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film. The last of his films to screen in Berlin, 1990's SKRIVANCI NA NITI (Larks On A String), won both the Golden Bear and the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at the Berlinale that year.

His latest film, OBSLUHOVAL JSEM ANGLICKEHO KRALE (I Served The King of England), is a nostalgic look at the glamorous life at an old-world Prague hotel, before World War II and during the occupation by the Nazis. The film, which is shot on location and on set at the famous Barrandov Studios, is based on a prize-winning 1989 novel by Bohumil Hrabal.

Sandy Mandelberger
Berlin Online Dailies Editor