Cinema: Berlinale

The Berlin film festival (Berlinale) features a juried international competition, a film market and a very large number of screenings arranged under various categories and is one of the most important film festivals in Europe and the world. The festival also hosts an annual competition of "shooting stars" - 18 filmmakers who have made their names in their respective countries - as well as the increasingly popular Forum of Young Cinema and the children's film festival. The festival was founded in 1951 on an American-led Cold War initiative and has become a leading film event. Well-known world-class filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roman Polanski and Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol (the French Nouvelle Vague) all have enjoyed triumphs in Berlin.

The official programme at this year's festival includes the awaited "Angel" by French director François Ozon, "Bordertown," by Gregory Nava, "El Otro" ("The Other"), by Ariel Rotter, "Goodbye Bafana" by Bille August, "The Good German" by Stephen Soderbergh, "The Good Shepherd" by Robert De Niro and "Les Temoins" ("The Witnesses"), by Andre Techine. Out of competition will be "300" by Zack Snyder, "Letters From Iwo Jima" by Clint Eastwood and "The Walker" by Paul Schrader.

The Berlinale also organizes a Talent Campus. This year's campus will focus on issues such as filmmakers finding their own path through the globalised film industry, and it will discuss more intensive support for young talents, engagement for diversity in international film and the cinema as a place for political discourse, says Dorothee Wenner who is responsible for the Campus 2007. Not so far away... yet no time to go...