Hollywood royalty to sprinkle stardust at 62nd Berlinale

Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman, Robert Pattinson, Antonio Banderas and Christian Bale are due to present new films at 62nd Berlin film festival, which kicks off today in the frigid German capital.

A lot of stories are seen from the perspective of the underdog...

The first major European festival of the year is set to be dominated by Arab Spring uprisings and political turmoil in the West.

Farewell My Queen, a drama starring Diane Kruger as Marie Antoinette on the eve of the French Revolution and told from the point of view of the underclass – a kind of Occupy Versailles – will set the tone for 11 days of world premieres.

“There is a clear theme running through the Berlinale this year and that is upheaval,” festival director Dieter Kosslick told reporters as he unveiled the line-up featuring nearly 400 films.

“A lot of stories are seen from the perspective of the underdog and that theme of radical change and political awakening applies to our opening film too.”

Farewell My Queen by French director Benoit Jacquot is one of 18 pictures vying for the Golden Bear top prize, to be awarded by a jury led by British director Mike Leigh and including US actor Jake Gyllenhaal, Franco-British actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn and French director François Ozon.

Also on the panel is Iran’s Asghar Farhadi, who took home the Golden Bear and swept the acting prizes last year for his wrenching drama A Separation, setting the film on a trajectory that has now seen it nominated for a foreign-language Oscar.

Berlin prides itself on being “edgier” than its chief competitors, Cannes and Venice, with a more overtly political programme.

This year’s event will spotlight the Arab Spring one year after the fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak with documentaries shot on the ground, panel discussions and feature films dealing with the region’s history and cultures.

And three films in the festival’s Forum section will spotlight the nuclear disaster at Fukushima last March, including No Man’s Zone which takes viewers into the contaminated area around the stricken reactors.

Ms Jolie is to present her directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey, a Bosnian wartime love story, and participate in an audience discussion after the screening. Ms Streep will pick up an honorary Golden Bear for her life’s work and the festival will show the top films of her career culminating in a gala screening of her new Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady.

In the competition, 2007 Golden Bear winner Wang Quan’an will unveil his sweeping Chinese epic, White Deer Plain, based on “one of the most controversial novels in modern Chinese literature,” Mr Kosslick said.

Chen Zhongshi’s prize-winning bestseller depicts the hardscrabble lives of generations of families in the countryside before the rise of communism.

Filipino art-house star Brillante Mendoza’s will join the running with Captive, starring French screen icon Isabelle Huppert as an aid worker kidnapped by Islamic extremist group Abu Sayyaf.

US actor and film-maker Billy Bob Thornton, who won a screenwriting Oscar for his own first outing as a feature film director, 1996’s Sling Blade, will premiere the Vietnam War-era drama Jayne Mansfield’s Car in the competition.

Other entries in the main showcase include British drama Bel Ami, based on a Guy de Maupassant novel and starring Mr Pattinson of Twilight fame as a young man who manipulates Paris’s wealthiest women to realise his ambitions.

Ms Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Ricci co-star in the picture, which will appear out of competition.

Mr Bale will also appear out of competition in The Flowers of War by Chinese master Zhang Yimou.

Festival’s line-up

• Barbara, Germany
• Caesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire), Italy
• Captive, France/Philippines/Germany/Britain
• Childish Games (Dictado), Spain
• Coming Home (A moi seule), France
• Farewell My Queen (Les adieux à la Reine), France/Spain
• Home For The Weekend, Germany
• Jayne Mansfield’s Car, US
• Just The Wind (Csak a szel), Hungary/Germany/France
• Mercy (Gnade), Germany/Norway
• Meteora, Germany/Greece
• Postcards From The Zoo (Kebun binatang), Indonesia/Germany/Hong Kong/China
• A Royal Affair (En Kongelig Affaere), Denmark/Czech Republic/Germany/Sweden
• Sister (L’enfant d’en haut), Switzerland/France
• Tabu, Portugal/Germany/Brazil/France
• Tey (Aujourd’hui), France/Senegal
• War Witch (Rebelle), Canada
• White Deer Plain (Bai lu yuan), China

Out-of-competition
• Bel Ami, Britain
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, US
• The Flowers of War (Jin Ling Shi San Chai), Zhang Yimou, China
• Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Hong Kong/China
• Shadow Dancer, Britain/Ireland

Special screenings
• Haywire, US
• The Iron Lady, Britain