Antonio Banderas
© AFP/Getty Images/File Scott HalleranBERLIN (AFP) - French actress Delpy, who won audiences' hearts with her romantic turn alongside Ethan Hawke in "Before Sunset" and its sequel "Before Sunrise" nine years later, is showing her directorial debut.
Playing true to type, Delpy, who co-wrote the script for "Before Sunrise" with Hawke, has delivered a romantic comedy entitled "Deux Jours" (Two Days in Paris).
Spanish heartthrob Banderas is giving directing another try, this time in his mother tongue, after critics gave his first attempt, "Crazy in Alabama", a lukewarm reception.
His new film "El Camino de los Ingleses" (Summer Rain) features acclaimed Spanish actress Victoria Abril, with whom he starred in Pedro Almodovar's "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down", and Alberto Amarilla.
Steve Buscemi's "Interview 83" features English starlet Sienna Miller in a remake of a film by slain Dutch director Theo Van Gogh about a charged encounter between a political journalist and a famous actress.
It is screening in the festival's Panorama Special section which also features the much talked about new French adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence 1928 sex-in-the-woods novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover".
Directed by Pascale Ferran, the film runs for nearly three hours.
Festival director Dieter Kosslick said US star George Clooney, a near perennial favourite at the Berlinale, has pleaded off this year though his "The Good German" is screening in competition.
But Cate Blanchett, Faye Dunaway, Lauren Bacall and Emmanuelle Beart will be lending glamour to the event which kicks off on February 8 with the premiere of "La Vie en Rose", a biopic about French singer Edith Piaf.
French cinema is given ample billing at the festival, with veteran directors Jacques Rivette and Andre Techine unveiling their latest works, but Kosslick said the slowly recovering German industry was also heading for another strong year after scooping up the main acting awards in 2006.
"We have German actors and actresses in 10 of the really important films screening here, though they are not necessarily German productions," he told a press conference.
Lovers of German cinema will be able to see a fully remastered version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's epic work "Berlin Alexanderplatz".
"It is two degrees lighter than the original, which means that this time you can actually see Alexanderplatz. I know that the purists may be horrified," Kosslick said. Alexanderplatz, is a large, open square in central Berlin.
The festival's reputation for intellectual cinema attracts stars not only to the main programme but also to the fringes, the director of the Forum section, Christoph Terhechte, said.
"Isabella Rossellini has come back this year for the sake of an 8-mm silent movie," he said, referring to Guy Maddin's childhood drama "Brand upon the Brain".
Rossellini does not star in the film, but will do a live narration.
Major glamour with a German touch comes in the form of an 88-minute portrait of Karl Lagerfeld.
The Hamburg-born fashion designer who runs the house of Chanel has let the camera get up close and personal for "Lagerfeld Confidential".
"You literally see him picking out his collars in the morning," Kosslick said.
The festival runs through till February 18 with 22 films competing for its prestigious Golden Bear prize.
©AFP