BERLINALE 2004 COMPETITION

By Admin in News
on Wednesday, January 21st, 2004

The selection of films for the Competition of the 54th Berlin International Film Festival — which opens with Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain — is now complete.

Twenty three of the twenty six films selected will compete for the festival’s highest prize, the Golden Bear. (Three films will be shown out of competition.)

The films are from 18 countries; 19 are world premieres, two are directing debuts.

The Korean star director Kim Ki-Duk will present the world premiere of his film Samaria in which two teenage girls turn to prostitution to earn money for a trip to Europe.

Another world premiere screening in the Competition is the Hong Kong production 20:30:40 by Sylvia Chang. Set in the bustling city of Taipei, the film details the travails of three women in different phases of their lives. Director Sylvia Chang, who is herself an extremely popular actress and entertainer in Asia, co-stars in her own film with Ren Liu and Lee Sinje.

Two productions in the competition represent the Festival’s special focus on Latin America this year:

Daniel Burman, one of the stars of New Argentine Cinema, will present the world premiere of El abrazo partido. His protagonist’s world is the small, seedy shopping center in Buenos Aires where his mother runs a laundry — a world of despair and decay from which many young people try to escape by reclaiming the nationality of their European ancestors.

The U.S./Colombian co-production Maria Full of Grace, by Joshua Marston, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Maria, from a small town near the Columbian capital of Bogota, who feels oppressed by the strict work regime at a flower plantation and the cramped situation of her family. In a desperate attempt to escape these conditions, she becomes a drug runner. Produced by Paul Mezey with funding from HBO, Maria Full of Grace debuted in Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The 26-year-old American director Omar Naim, who was born in Lebanon, will present the world premiere of his directing debut, a science-fiction thriller entitled The Final Cut. Alan Hackman (Robin Williams) works in a new field of technology. Anyone who has enough money can have a chip implanted which is capable of storing all the emotions and experiences of a lifetime. Hackman is a pro at his job, but one day when he is editing the memories of a stranger, he comes across “footage” from his own childhood. Robin Williams, Jim Caviezal and Mira Sorvino co-star.

Among the other American films in competition are Patty Jenkins’s directing debut Monster, featuring Charlize Theron; Nancy Meyers’s Somethings Gotta Give, starring Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Keanu Reeves and Frances McDormand; Ron Howard’s The Missing, with Kate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones; Antonine Fuqua’s concert film Lightning in a Bottle featuring blues legends B.B. King, Solomon Burke, Natalie Cole and The Neville Brothers, which was filmed live at Radio City Music Hall; and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset which reunites audiences with the protagonists from Before Sunrise, winner of a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1994. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) meet again in Paris, nearly ten years after their romantic encounter in Vienna, and spend an afternoon together. Before Sunset is a world premiere in Competition.

The Competition will conclude with the world premiere of the Belgian-French-Spanish co-production 25 degres en hiver by Stephane Vuillet. His first full-length feature film is an urban road movie with comic undertones featuring Jacques Gamblin, winner of a Silver Bear for acting in 2002, along with Carmen Maura, Ingeborga Dapkunaite and Raphaelle Molinier.

The award ceremony of the 54th Berlin International Film Festival will be held on February 14, 2004.

The complete program of the Competion:

20:30:40, Sylvia Chang, Taiwan/Hong Kong

25 degres en hiver/25 Degrees in Winter, Stephane Vuillet, Belgium/France/Spain

Ae Fond Kiss, Ken Loach, Great Britain

Beautiful Country, Hans Petter Moland, Norway/USA. Starring Nick Nolte, Tim Roth and Damien Nguyen. (Sony Pictures Classics)

Before Sunset, Richard Linklater, USA (Warner Independent Pictures)

Cold Mountain, Anthony Minghella, USA (out of competition, opening night)

Confidences trop intimes/Intimate Strangers, Patrice Leconte, France

Country of my Skull, John Boorman, Great Britain

Die Nacht singt ihre Lieder/Nightsongs, Romuald Karmakar, Germany

El Abrazo Partido/Lost Embrace, Daniel Burman, Argentina