ROMANIAN FILM WINS TOP PRIZE AT BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL

At an awards ceremony dominated by films from Eastern Europe, the Berlin Film Festival named the Romanian drama Child’s Pose (Pozitia Copilului) the winner of its prestigious Golden Bear award. The film, about the efforts of a domineering woman to use her wealth to keep her irresponsible son out of prison after he kills a […]

MARTIAL ARTS EPIC OPENS BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL

The 63rd annual Berlin Film Festival — The Berlinale — gets underway tonight (Thursday) with a screening of The Grandmaster, a martial-arts epic from Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai. The director also heads the jury that will decide which of the 19 films entered in the competition will receive the prestigious Golden Bear award. […]

BERLINALE TO OPEN WITH WONG KAR WAI’S THE GRANDMASTER

The international premiere of Wong Kar Wai’s epic film The Grandmaster, starring Tony Leung, has been selected to open the Berlin Film Festival on February 9, the festival announced today (Wednesday). Screening out of competition (Wong is also this year’s jury president), the film also features several well-known Chinese actors and “hundreds of Asia’s top […]

BERLINALE’S GOLDEN BEAR GOES TO CAESAR MUST DIE

Caesar Must Die, a gritty film about a group of Italian prisoners who stage Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, won the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear award Saturday. The black-and-white “semi-documentary,” produced with actual prisoners serving time at Rebibbia, a maximum-security prison in Rome, was the latest work of famed octogenarian brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. When […]

RECORD CROWDS AT BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL

At the halfway point of the Berlin Film Festival — the Berlinale — organizers on Tuesday said that already 250,000 tickets had been sold. The number of sales were boosted by the addition of a new venue, the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, and it is occurring despite freezing temperatures, snow and ice on the streets, […]

JOLIE COMES OUT FIGHTING AT BERLIN NEWS CONFERENCE

Angelina Jolie vigorously defended her first film as a writer/director at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday. While she was greeted with customary applause when she entered a packed news conference auditorium, boos could be heard from some members of the press following the screening of her film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, […]

DIRECTOR DALDRY: WHY NO OTHER 9/11 MOVIES?

None of the critics who greeted Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close with angry comments about how it assertedly exploits the 9/11 tragedy to jerk tears from the audience were among those putting questions to Daldry at a news conference at the Berlin Film Festival, where the movie is being screened in competition today […]

BERLINALE JURY MEETS THE PRESS

The ever-provocative British director Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky, Another Year) showed that he has not dampened his sometimes incendiary sentiments as he appeared with the other members of the Berlin Film Festival’s jury at a news conference today (Thursday). Leigh, who is this year’s jury president, remarked at first that the […]

STREEP TO BE HONORED AT BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL

Upping the star wattage at next month’s Berlin Film Festival, its director, Dieter Koslick, announced that Maryl Streep will receive a valentine in the form of an honorary Golden Bear on Feb. 14, when her latest film, The Iron Lady, will be screened out of competition. (Over the four-day weekend, the film grossed $280,409 from […]

BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL SELECTS TWO OSCAR-CONTENDING FILMS

Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, has been selected to make its international debut in February at the Berlin Film Festival, where it will screen out of competition, the festival announced today (Monday). The film, set in New York during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, is due […]

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