BERLIN: The 59th Berlin Film Festival opened Thursday with the topical thriller The International, starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts as crusaders against a corrupt banking conglomerate.
The world premiere at a gala screening is kicking off the 11-day event, the first major European film festival of the year which ranks second only to Cannes in size and prestige.
But critics at a press screening earlier in the day gave the picture a tepid response, with a smattering of applause and a few boos.
Although The International was developed six years before the financial crisis erupted late last year, Owen said the plot seems like it was ripped from today s headlines.
The whole film is about this huge, faceless multi-billion-dollar bank who I believe to be corrupt and try to convince people, and try to bring them down, he told AFP.
The big questions in the movie are: do banks use our money appropriately? Can you trust them? Are they corrupt? Now the questions have been hugely to the fore in the last six months with what s been going on.
The International, which is not in competition for the festival s coveted Golden Bear top prize, was inspired by the early 1990s collapse of the scandal-plagued Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
It was made by German filmmaker Tom Tykwer, who shot to fame with the cult heist movie Run, Lola, Run in 1998 and is hoping for a big international hit after the disappointing showing of his murder mystery Perfume in 2006.
I think a lot of people in Hollywood are waiting to see if this will be his real breakthrough, the bureau chief of trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter, Scott Roxborough, told AFP.
In a festival traditionally dominated by gritty political fare, 18 pictures are vying for the Golden Bear, to be awarded February 14 by this year s jury president, Oscar-winning Scottish actress Tilda Swinton.
Despite the bitter winter cold, film fans are expecting Hollywood stardust a-plenty on Berlin s red carpet.
Renee Zellweger is due in town with My One and Only, a comedy about a glamorous young mother in the 1950s shopping for a rich husband.
Tommy Lee Jones appears in a supernatural drama set in Louisiana, In The Electric Mist, directed by France s Bertrand Tavernier, while Demi Moore will be seen as a woman caring for her ailing father in Happy Tears.
Two decades after they made Dangerous Liaisons, Michelle Pfeiffer reunites with Stephen Frears ( The Queen ) to play a courtesan in Cheri based on the 1920 novel by French writer Colette.
Francois Ozon of France ( Swimming Pool ) will gun for the Golden Bear with Ricky about an extraordinary baby, while Britain s Sally Potter sends up the fashion industry in Rage featuring Jude Law in drag.
And Kate Winslet is expected in town to promote The Reader, a Holocaust drama based on a German novel which has already won her a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination.
Ashghar Fahradi of Iran will present About Elly telling the story of an Iranian emigrant in Europe returning home, while festival favorite Chen Kaige will bring Forever Enthralled, a biopic on China s greatest opera star.
Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, who made the harrowing drama on forced prostitution Lilya 4-ever, will unveil his first English-language feature starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams.
Last year, Jose Padilha of Brazil won the Golden Bear for Elite Squad, a controversial look at police brutality in the favelas of Rio.
Leavened in with the hard-hitting films will be a few special features.
Steve Martin will bring the sequel to his comedy caper The Pink Panther in which he appears as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau.
And a year after the Rolling Stones opened the Berlinale with their Martin Scorsese concert film Shine A Light, an ode to the electric guitar featuring Led Zeppelin s Jimmy Page, The Edge of U2 and the White Stripes Jack White, It Might Get Loud, is to premiere here.
The Edge is expected at the gala screening of the film, made by Davis Guggenheim, known for his Oscar-winning documentary with Al Gore An Inconvenient Truth.
