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Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick at a press conference announcing the final lineup of films for the 2010 festival on February 1.

(© picture-alliance/dpa)

The Berlin International Film Festival celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2010 with a lineup of some 400 movies, its organizers announced in Berlin on February 1.

The global filmfest, also known as the Berlinale, runs this year from February 11 to 20 and includes a special screening of Fritz Lang's newly restored 1927 masterpiece Metropolis.

It also features 18 world premieres in competition, including Der Räuber (The Robber) by Germany's Benjamin Heisenberg, Shutter Island by Martin Scorcese, The Ghost Writer by Roman Polanski and Tuan Yuan (Apart Together) by China's Wang Quar'an. 

Leonardo DiCaprio, whose mother Irmelin is German, is expected in Berlin as the star of Shutter Island, as are Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan, who both star in The Ghost Writer.

Bollywood heartthrob Sha Rukh will also make an appearance to promote My Name is Khan, and Gerard Depardieu will be in Berlin for the world premiere of the French film Mammuth by Benoit Delepine and co-starring Isabelle Adjani.

Other eagerly anticipated US entries include Howl, co-directed by Rob Epstein and Jerry Friedman and starring James Franco as beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and Greenberg, starring Ben Stiller and directed by indie darling Noah Baumbach.

A screening of About Her Brother (Otouto) by Japanese master Yoji Yamada, 78, will wrap up the festival's main program on January 20. A jury led by German director Werner Herzog and including American actress Renee Zellweger will subsequently hand out the festival's coveted Golden and Silver Bear prizes at a gala ceremony.

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Dieter Kosslick shows off a big Berlinale birthday cake as the media looks on in Berlin.

(© picture-alliance/dpa)

This year's festival, which also marks the 40th anniversary of its competition, panorma and focus programs, will moreover honor legendary French Nouvelle Vague director Eric Rohmer, who died at 89 in Paris on January 11, by screening several of his films.

Celebrating cinematic history

The first Berlinale began on June 6, 1951 at the Titania Palast movie theater in Berlin.

"In the early festival years the Cold War was palpable; Berlin was always the focus, as a symbol of shame, of divided systems - but also for a new beginning," said Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick.

"When reconstruction began, we wanted to remind the world of the cultural metropolis Berlin was before the war," he said, adding, "... the birthday cake of nearly 400 films has been baked. Let's light the 60 candles!"

Haneke, Akin, Wortmann, Dresen in German program

In 2009, German films achieved about 27 percent of market share in German movie theaters, maintaining the success of 2008, according to the Berlinale program.

Among the best received German films of 2009 were Til Schweiger's Zweiohrküken (Rabbit Without Ears 2),  starring Til Schweiger, Germany's answer to Brad Pitt, and Söhnke Wortmann's Die Päpstin (Pope Joan), starring Johanna Wokalek and John Goodman.

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Bears of the Berlinale

(© picture-alliance/ dpa)

The German Cinema program at this year's Berlinale consists of 17 films, including 16 feature-length productions and one documentary - Pianomania, by Robert Cibis und Lilian Franck, which has already proven popular at other film festivals.

Four highly anticipated new German films to be screened at the festival are Schwerkraft by Maximilian Erlenwein, Was du nicht siehtst (What you don't see) by Wolfgang Fischer, 13 Semester - der frühe Vogel kann mich mal (13 Semesters - The Early Bird Catches the Worm) by Frieder Wittich, and Parkour by Marc Rensing.

Michael Haneke's Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee The White Ribbon - a co-production between Germany, Austria, France and Italy - is also on the agenda, as is Soul Kitchen, by internationally acclaimed German-Turkish director Fatih Akin.

Other films in the German Cinema program are: Lila, lila (My Words, my Lies - my Love) by Matthias Glasner; Same Same But Different by Detlev Buck; Whisky mit Wodka (Whisky with Vodka) by Andreas Dresen; Wüstenblume (Desert Rose) by Sherry Hormann; Mein Kampf (nach George Tabori) by Urs Odermatts; Die Tür (The Door) by Anno Saul; 66/67 - fairplay war gestern (66/67 - One Family is Enough) by Carsten Ludwig and Jan-Christoph Glaser; and This is Love by Matthias Glaser.

Silent movie classic Metropolis fully restored

The 2010 Berlinale will also feature a  gala premiere on February 12 of Fritz Lang's Metropolis at the Friedrichstadtpalast theater which will be screened simultaneously at the Brandenburg Gate. The 1927 silent film will be accompanied by an original score by Gottfried Huppertz performed live by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under Frank Strobel.

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A poster for "Metropolis," the monumental silent film about a futuristic society by director Fritz Lang

(© picture- alliance/dpa)

"Metropolis is one of the classics in film history which set international standards for cinematic art. This is why UNESCO has included Metropolis as the first film in its 'Memory of the World' registry," said Bernd Neumann, Germany's federal government commissioner for culture and the media, adding that the Wiesbaden-based Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation received 200,000 euros in federal funding to restore Metropolis.

Berlin's Film and Television Museum in cooperation with the Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken in Buenos Aires also supported the restoration process, made possible only through the sensational find in 2008 of a 16-mm negative in Buenos Aires long believed lost.

The film was cut by about 30 minutes early on.  The original 4,180-meter version of the film premiered on January 10, 1927 in Berlin. After it was screened for four months without much success, Germany's Ufa film studio produced a shorter, 3241-meter version for wide release across the country in summer 1927.

"The never given-up dream spanning decades to restore Fritz Lang's original cut of Metropolis, believed to have been irretrievably lost, stands symbolically for the responsibility of the Murnau Foundation to maintain our rich film heritage,"  said Eberhard Junkersdorf of the Murnau Foundation.

"With the restoration and screening of Metropolis a dream is now becoming reality."

Related Links:

Berlin International Film Festival

German Films - new releases, screenings, etc.

UNESCO - Memory of the World Registry - Germany

Fritz Lang's Metropolis - Key Scenes Rediscovered - ZEIT Online