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Wartime dramas with De Niro, Clooney to star at Berlin film fest
2007-01-04
World War II dramas starring Robert De Niro and George Clooney will lead the lineup at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival next month. De Niro will come to the German capital with "The Good Shepherd", the tale of an idealistic Yale graduate recruited by US intelligence in the 1940s. The film marks De Niro's second outing as a director and also stars Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. In Steven Soderbergh's "The Good German", Clooney plays a US journalist who becomes embroiled in a murder conspiracy in postwar Berlin. Soderbergh used 1940s-era equipment to make the black-and-white film, which also stars Cate Blanchett. "We are delighted to be able to present a number of new works by renowned directors and interesting young filmmakers again," festival director Dieter Kosslick said in a statement. "Many of the productions selected for this year's competition link modern historical processes to personal, intimate and extremely emotional stories." British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull will appear in the Belgian-German-British competition entry "Irina Palm" as a down-on-her-luck widow forced to take a job in a sex club. And Oscar-winning Danish director Bille August will unveil "Goodbye Bafana", featuring Joseph Fiennes as a South African prison guard whose life is transformed when he meets Nelson Mandela. This year's first Asian entry to the Berlinale is "I'm A Cyborg But That's OK" by South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook about a delusional young woman who falls in love. German director Christian Petzold, who scored a local hit in 2005 with "Ghosts", will join the competition with "Yella" about a young woman from ex-communist east Germany who tries to escape her unhappy life by taking a job in the west. The Berlinale, running February 8 to 18, ranks just below Cannes and alongside Venice among Europe's premier film festivals.
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