Berlin

Saturday, 7 February----German films and co-productions dominate the Main Competition section of this year’s Berlinale….making a big score for the home team at Germany’s most prestigious and influential film event. Giving German films and filmmakers such a prominent international showcase has always been one of the goals (and sometimes the challenges) of the Festival. These days, with such recent successes as THE LIVES OF OTHERS and this year’s Oscar nominee THE BADER MEINHOF COMPLEX, the German industry is on a roll, with German money actively jumpstarting project not necessarily in the German language. Such co-productions have been more of the rule rather than the objection.

This year’s Competition program includes such anticipated titles as: ALLE ANDEREN (Everyone Else), the sophomore feature directorial effort by Maren Ade, who also wrote the screenplay about an odd couple whose seesaw relationship goes from tremendous highs to terrifying lows during an idyllic country holiday; GERMANY 09, an anthology of short films marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, with contributions from such recognized directing talents as Dani Levy, Fatih Akin, Wolfgang Becker, Tom Twyker and a host of other German auteurs; THE DUST OF TIME, Portugese director Manoel de Olivera’s historical panorama starring Willem Dafoe, Bruno Ganz and Michel Piccoli (a co-production with Greece, Italy and Russia); GIGANTE, a German/Argentina co-production about the relationship between a lonely security guard and a late-shift store cleaner, directed by Adrian Biniez; the German/French/British co-production CHERI, a sophisticated tale of sex and intrigue set in the Paris of the early 20th century, directed by Stephen Frears; MAMMOTH, a German/Swedish/Danish co-production directed by Swedish sensation Lukas Moodyson and starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams; and STORM, a blistering courtroom drama focused on Serbian war crimes, directed by Hans-Christian Schmid.