By IPS Correspondents
BERLIN, Feb 8 2005 (IPS)

With 21 feature films entered for the top Golden Bear award, critics predict competition will again be fierce at the 55th International Berlin Film Festival Feb. 10 to Feb. 20.

More than 600 movies are due to be screened during the festival’s 11-day run. Seventeen full-length feature films will be world premiered.

Africa is prominent in the main competition. In the U.S. production ‘Sometimes in April’, film enthusiasts will be confronted with the gruesome civil war in Rwanda ten years ago. Raoul Peck’s film begins its investigation at the same place as director Terry George’s ‘Hotel Rwanda’. But there the resemblance ends.

The British-South African-Italian co-production ‘Hotel Rwanda’ is based on the true story of hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina who, during the civil war, sheltered more than a thousand Tutsi refugees from the Hutu militia. Don Cheadle has been nominated for a Golden Globe award for his role.

Yet another African theme is handled in Mark Dornford-May’s screen adaptation of Bizet’s opera ‘Carmen-e-Khayelitsha’ (‘Carmen in Khayelitsha’) set in a South African township. The film has been made entirely in the country’s official language Xhosa. The title role is played by international opera star Pauline Malefane, herself from Khayelitsha.

A competition entry certain to arouse controversy in Berlin is the Dutch-German-French production ‘Paradise’ by Hany Abu-Assad. It is a graphic account of the last 28 hours in the lives of two Palestinian suicide bombers. Starring Kais Nashif and Ali Hamade, it is being shown internationally for the first time.

This year the Berlin festival organisers go head-to-head with Cannes by opening with French director Regus Wargnier’s movie ‘Man to Man’ which had been expected to headline at the Cannes festival in May.

Entered in competition, it is a historical adventure epic about a group of anthropologists on a research trip to South Africa in the 1870s. A 30-million-dollar production, it stars Joseph Fiennes (‘Luther’, ‘Shakespeare in Love’) and Kristin Scott Thomas (‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, ‘The English Patient’). They are being tipped to win the Best Actor and Best Actress awards in Berlin. Ian Glen, Hugh Bonneville and Flora Montgomery have supporting roles.

French movies featured in competition include ‘Les Temps qui Changent’ (‘Changing Times’) by Andre Techine, which sees Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu teamed up as a pair of lovers meeting again in Tangiers after a separation of 30 years.

Other French entries are ‘Les Mots Bleu’ (‘Words in Blue’) by Alain Corneau, portraying a teacher trying to find out why a little girl is so uncommunicative, and director Jacques Audiard’s ‘The Beat that Skipped My Heart’ dealing with a protagonist who, trying to give his life another direction, finds himself in a series of bizarre predicaments.

Yet another French movie is Robert Guediguian’s ‘Le Promeneur Du Champ De Mars’ (‘The Walker Of The Champ De Mars’). It deals with the final days of former French president Francois Mitterrand during which he passed on intimate secrets and personal memories to a young journalist. The movie is based on Georges-Marc Benamou’s biography of the late French president, and has Michel Bouquet (‘Toto, the Hero’) in the role of Mitterrand.

The German-French co-production ‘Gespenster’ (‘Ghosts’) by Christian Petzold recounts the story of the Frenchwoman Francoise whose daughter is abducted as a small child in Berlin. After years of uncertainty, she thinks she has finally found her daughter when she spots the vagrant young woman Nina, played by Julia Hummer.

The Berlin festival has always attracted Asian productions. This year is no exception.

Gu Changwei, one of China’s most famous cinematographers (‘Farewell My Concubine!’) makes his directorial debut at the Berlinale with ‘Peacock’. It tells the story of a family’s daily life in a small town in Henan province in the 1970s after the Cultural Revolution.

Two other Asian films seeking honours in Berlin are Tsai Ming-Liang’s Taiwanese-Chinese-French co-production ‘Tian bian yi duo yun’ (‘The Wayward Cloud’), which juxtaposes musical scenes with explicit sex scenes, and Japanese director Yoji Yamada’s ‘The Hidden Blade’, about a samurai in the mid-19th century during a time of social upheaval.

Two years ago Yamada’s ‘The Twilight Samurai’ was screened in competition at the Berlinale.

Two other films certain to attract attention in Berlin are Marc Rothemund’s ‘Sophie Scholl’, the resistance member executed in Munich by the Nazis in 1943, and director Bill Condon’s ‘Kinsey’ which deals with sexuality, and will be the final film shown in the main competition.

In ‘Sophie Scholl’ actress Julia Jentsch stars as the young German who refused to abandon her convictions even when her life was at stake. ‘Kinsey’ is based on the life of Alfred C. Kinsey, who altered American culture with his book ‘Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male’ in 1948. Ever since he has been regarded as the father of scientific sex. Liam Neeson and Laura Linney co-star.

Films from Italy, Russia, Denmark, the United States and Britain also compete for awards. The festival’s retrospective section, incorporating 45 international films from the past 65 years, highlights Stanley Kubrick this year.

Veteran German-born director Roland Emmerich has been named president of the festival’s international jury. He gained worldwide acclaim with his film ‘The Noah’s Ark Principle’ in 1984. Discovered by Hollywood, he subsequently went on to make ‘Independence Day’, ‘Godzilla’ and ‘The Patriot’.

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