The Berlin International Film Festival, is one of the world´s leading film festivals held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951, the festival is celebrated annually in February since 1978 and with more than 200.000 sold tickets and around 400,000 admissions it is considered the biggest publicly-attended film festival worldwide.This years festival will be held from 07 to 17 February 2008 and will see around twenty films competing for the awards called the Golden and Silver Bears which include caegories for Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Actor Best Actress and Lifetime Achievement ("Honorary Golden Bear") Over the two-week festival, up to 400 films are screened and films of genre, length and format can be submitted for consideration with many of them being World or European premieres. Categories range from international blockbusters to small, independent art-house films. There’s also a special section aimed at children with the Kinderfilmfest. To date, the selection includes productions from the Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Poland, Israel, Canada, USA, Brazil, Mexico, Japan and the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong, China. Some of the following films are to have their world or international premiere during the Berlinale 2008, and will compete for the Golden Bear and the Silver Bears; “There Will Be Blood” by Paul Thomas Anderson, which is also nominated for a Directors Guild award is from the USA and is a film adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil” which recounts the remarkable story of an unsuccessful silver miner who rises to become a US oil magnate in the early 20th century. After taking part in the 2001 festival, Chinese director Wang will this time present “Zuo You”(In Love We Trust) which sees the mother of a child who has cancer resorts to unusual measures to save her firstborn.

Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke took part in the Berlinale Talent Campus in 2003 and is now returning to Berlin with his second feature film: “Lake Tahoe” which follows a sixteen-year-old boy who has to cope with his father’s sudden death.

Britian enters with the world premiere of “Gardens of the Night” by Damian Harris which describes the fate of two children who are abducted and held captive for over nine years. Once free, they are forced to take to the streets and fend for themselves. Oscar-winner Andrzej Wajda, who has participated in the Berlinale Competition three times and received the Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement in 2006, will be presenting his latest work “Katyn.” The film examines a topic that was long taboo: the massacre of thousands of Polish war prisoners by the Soviet secret service in 1940.

In Brazil, “Tropa de Elite” (The Elite Squad) has broken all box-office records and will have its international premire at the festival. The Berlinale 2008 will screen this political thriller in the Competition. Director José Padilha (Bus 174) explores the terrible influence of the drug mafia on the poorest inhabitants of Brazil, and reveals the daily routines of a brutal and corrupt special unit of the Brazilian military police.

The first International Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale) was held in 1951 in the Titania-Palast cinema only six years after WWII when Berlin yearned for international attention and recognition. Over 50 years on, the festival now attracts thousands of filmmakers, industry professionals and film lovers from around the world. Unlike the famous Cannes Film Festival in France, tickets are available so that visitors can enter the glamorous world of Berlinale to view films and rub shoulders with the stars.

FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison

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