[attach id=237129 size="medium"]River Phoenix plays a loner in the American desert who offers shelter to an American couple in Dark Blood.[/attach]

American actor River Phoenix has returned to the big screen 20 years from his death after Dark Blood director George Sluizer salvaged the footage of his incomplete 1993 film and filled in the gaps with voiceovers.

Phoenix was considered one of the most promising performers of his generation before he died suddenly of a suspected drug overdose aged 23, 10 days before shooting on Dark Blood was scheduled to finish.

British actor Jonathan Pryce, who starred alongside Phoenix and Judy Davis in the story of a couple who get lost in the American desert, said he had no reason to suspect the young star was taking drugs during six weeks of filming together.

“I found him a remarkable young man,” Pryce told reporters after a press screening in Berlin.

“I can’t believe now looking back that he was only 23 at the time, a kind of old head on young shoulders. He was absolutely delightful and wonderful to work with.

“In all the weeks we were together in Utah ... at no time did I experience him using drugs or abusing drugs in any way, shape or form. I’m not a drug user myself but I’d have known. It was a time in his life when he was very committed to not using drugs. I loved him a lot and I love his memory.”

In Dark Blood, Phoenix plays Boy, a disturbed young widower of Native American extraction, who rescues wealthy couple Harry and Buffy, played by Pryce and Davis, when their vintage Bentley breaks down in the middle of the desert.

I can’t believe now looking back that he was only 23 at the time, a kind of old head on young shoulders. He was absolutely delightful and wonderful to work with- co-star Jonathan Pryce

Fearful of the forbidding landscape of scrub and canyon and the fierce heat, the couple are relieved and Buffy is initially attracted to the dark, brooding loner who lives in an isolated wooden shack on top of a hill.

But their unease begins when he shows them a candle-lit bunker carved into a canyon where he believes he and a mate can be saved from the end of the world, and that unease turns to fear when he refuses to take them to the nearest town.

The fact that Dark Blood was ever made is a minor miracle in itself.

In 1999, Sluizer discovered the film reels were about to be destroyed by the company that insured the movie and so flew from the Netherlands to Los Angeles just in time to rescue them.

In 2007 the Dutch film-maker, who is now 80, suffered a serious illness and so decided to try and finish what he had started. He estimated that 25 per cent of the footage was missing while sound and image often did not match.

Sluizer was forced to adjust his script to fit what he had, and to add voiceovers explaining the gaps in the action, but the overall effect is surprisingly coherent.

Whether wider audiences will be able to watch the completed film remains to be seen, with Sluizer yet to cut a deal with the company controlling the rights.

“They are very tough,” he said. “They are billionaires, money market people apparently who by mistake I would say have in their stock ... a film, and they don’t care about movies and they don’t care about culture, they care about money.”

He did, however, have the blessing of members of the Phoenix family, which includes River’s younger brother and fellow actor Joaquin.

“We’ve been in touch with the mother of River and had correspondence,” he said, adding that the family was not participating in the launch of the movie in any way.

“The relationship is that the mother of River wished us the best with the film.”

Sluizer set the film in Native American territory contaminated by nuclear tests and all but abandoned.

Asked why he had cast Phoenix in the lead role, the director replied: “I chose him because I wanted a contrast between what was known about ... him, what he looked like, with this kind of weird, a little bit mad character.”

He offered the tantalising prospect of more footage coming to light, saying some reels may have been found in London.

Ladies dominate awards buzz

If older women cannot find work in Hollywood, they might want to come to Berlin, where this year’s film festival has been studded with performances by seasoned actresses that have put them and their movies in the running for top prizes.

The 11-day cinema event, centred around the main competition of 19 films but showcasing hundreds more, winds up with an awards ceremony tonight.

The two frontrunners for the coveted Golden Bear for best picture centre around strong women in their 50s and 60s who overshadow the men around them.

Gloria, arguably the biggest hit at the 63rd Berlin film festival, stars Paulina Garcia as the eponymous Gloria, a 58-year-old divorcee living alone in Santiago where she is determined to enjoy life to the full. She goes out dancing on singles nights, drinks, smokes, has affairs, stays in touch with her children and works full time.

Director Sebastian Lelio said his inspiration for the character was his mother and her generation, rarely tackled in cinema which tends to be obsessed with youth.

“We all face crossroads in our lives where we can retreat into ourselves or we can hit the dancefloor,” he said.

Another favourite for best film and best actress is Child’s Pose, about a wealthy 60-year-old Romanian mother whose obsessive love for her son sees her try to buy his freedom when he accidentally knocks down and kills a boy.

Jay Weissberg, critic for the Variety trade publication, called the performance of Romanian veteran Luminita Gheorghiu as Cornelia a “tour-de-force”.

There was also a warm critical reception for French star Juliette Binoche in a film about the tragic story of sculptress Camille Claudel, who spent the last 29 years of her life wrongly confined by her family to a mental asylum.