Berlin On Cruise Control

FEBRUARY 5: Hollywood stars will hog the headlines but art house and world cinema will also be competing for the limelight when the 50th Berlin Film Festival opens in the German capital on Wednesday. New movies featuring Tom Cruise, Al Pacino and Leonardo DiCaprio are in competition for the Golden Bear award but will find themselves up against offerings from China’s Zhang Yimou, France’s Claude Miller, Germany’s Volker Schloendorff and less well-known film makers from countries such as Macedonia and Turkey.

The full list of films in competition is: Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson (US), the man who made Boogie Nights, with Tom Cruise as a sex guru and Julianne Moore and Jason Robards; there’s also the controversial The Beach by Danny Boyle (US), with Leonardo DiCaprio; Mayis Sikintisi (Clouds of May) by Nuri B. Ceylan (Turkey); Man on the Moon by Milos Forman (US), with Jim Carrey playing the acerbic comic Andy Kaufman and Danny De Vito; Prime Luci Dell’alba (First Lights of Dawn) by Lucio Gaudino (Italy);The Hurricane by Norman Jewison (US), with Denzel Washington as a wrongly-accused man; You Shi Tiaowu (The Island Tales) by Stanley Kwan (China); Love Me by Laetitia Masson (France); La Chambre des Magiciennes (The Room of the Magicians) by Claude Miller (France); The Talented Mr Ripley by Anthony Minghella (US), with the very talented Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow; Signs and Wonders by Jonathan Nossiter (US); Dokuritsu Gasshoudan (The Boys’ Choir) by Akira Ogata (Japan); Gouttes d’eau Sur Pierres Brulantes (Raining Drops on Burning Rocks) by Francois Ozon (France); Russkij Bunt (The Captain’s Daughter) by Aleksandr Proschkin (Russia); Nebeska Udica (Sky Hook) by Ljubija Samardzi (FYR of Macedonia); Die Stille Nach Dem Schuss (Rita’s Legends) by Volker Schloendorff (Germany); Any Given Sunday by Oliver Stone (US); Paradiso — Sieben Tage mit Sieben Frauen (Paradiso Seven Days with Seven Women) by Rudolf Thome (Germany); El Mar (The Sea) by Agusti Villaronga (Spain); The Million Dollar Hotel by Wim Wenders(US); and Wo De Fu Qin Mu Qin (The Road Home) by Zhang Yimou (China). The festival runs until February 20.