‘Last’ Soderbergh film in Berlin battle
Steven Soderbergh’s “last” movie, a battle of French screen icons and daring looks at homosexuality in the Catholic Church, will vie for gold at the Berlin film festival starting Thursday.
The 63rd Berlinale will open with martial arts epic The Grandmaster by Chinese arthouse favourite Wong Kar Wai (In the Mood for Love), who will also lead the jury handing out the Golden Bear top prize on February 16.
Nineteen productions including big-budget Hollywood movies, new work by European veterans and a clutch of debut features will compete for the top awards, among a total of more than 400 films at the 11-day event.
Star gazers can expect Matt Damon, Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Geoffrey Rush, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and Jeremy Irons on Berlin’s snow-dusted red carpet.
Damon teams up with US director Gus Van Sant for the first time since their 1997 Oscar winner Good Will Hunting in Promised Land, about families pressured to sell their property to fracking companies.
Soderbergh reunites with Law from Contagion and Catherine Zeta-Jones from Traffic to present Side Effects about pharmaceuticals firms preying on stressed-out Americans.
And France’s top divas will go head-to-head in three Golden Bear contenders.
Deneuve stars in the French road movie On My Way about a down-on-her-luck restaurant owner looking for a fresh start. The film is by Emmanuelle Bercot, one of three female directors in competition.
Binoche leads the cast of Camille Claudel 1915, about an artist forced into an asylum by her family.
And Huppert plays a mother superior infatuated with a novice in the Diderot adaptation The Nun.
Meanwhile In the Name of from Poland’s Malgoska Szumowska looks at the struggle of a charismatic village priest with his own homosexuality.
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