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 […]

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 […]

MIKE LEIGH TO HEAD JURY AT BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL

The Berlin Film Festival has selected award-winning British director Mike Leigh to head the jury at next year’s annual competition (February 9-17). In a statement, the festival said, “Over the course of his nearly 40-year film career, Mike Leigh has distinguished himself as one of the most outstanding film-makers of auteur cinema and protagonists of […]

IRANIAN FILM AWARDED TOP PRIZE IN BERLIN

The Berlin Film Festival — the Berlinale — whose jury was reduced by one member when the Iranian government imprisoned director Jafar Panahi, who was to have served on it, awarded the Golden Bear, its top prize, on Saturday to Nader and Simin: A Separation, a film by another Iranian director, Asghar Farhadi. The entire […]

FIENNES SAYS THE BARD ASKS QUESTIONS PERTINENT TODAY

Ralph Fiennes said at the Berlin Film Festival on Monday that plans to make a film version of Coriolanus had “sat inside my head” since he appeared in a stage production of the Shakespeare play more than ten years ago. At a news conference at the festival, where the film, which he produced, directed, and […]

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