Sawt Falasteen - Cinema's power to 'change the world' in focus at Berlin Film Fest

The Berlinale is the first major international festival on the annual film calendar, and has a reputation for topical and progressive programming.

This year's edition takes place against the backdrop of international tensions, the bloody crackdown on protests in Iran and global threats to human rights.

Speaking alongside other members of the jury at a press conference, Wenders, one of Germany's most celebrated directors, said "movies can change the world", but cautioned that "no movie has really changed any politician's idea".

"We can change the idea that people have of how they should live," said Wenders, who himself won an honorary Golden Bear award at the festival in 2015 in recognition of an illustrious career stretching back to the 1970s.

However, when pressed on Germany's support for Israel despite accusations of genocide in Gaza from human-rights groups, Wenders said: "We have to stay out of politics."

"We are the opposite of politics, we have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians," he said.

- 'Opportunity' for Afghan cinema -

The festival's opening film, "No Good Men", by Iran-born Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat, tells the story of Naru, a reporter at a Kabul TV station going through an acrimonious separation from her husband and who is increasingly questioning her beliefs about men.

The film is set in the run-up to the Taliban's seizure of power in 2021, which led Sadat herself to leave the country. She now lives in Hamburg.

Sadat, who also plays the lead role of Naru, told AFP she was delighted and "surprised" to be chosen to open the festival.

"It took time until I could put myself together and realise what a big honour it is for me," Sadat told AFP.

Afghan filmmakers are "trying to figure out... what does it mean to be the storyteller of our own stories", Sadat said.

"So I think for the young Afghan cinema it's really a great opportunity," she said.

The festival's opening ceremony, starting at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT), will honour Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh, who won the Best Actress Oscar in 2023 for "Everything Everywhere All at Once".

More than 200 films will be shown over the 10 days of the festival, of which 22 will be in competition for the top prize, the Golden Bear, last year scooped by Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud's film "Dreams".

As was the case last year, around 40 percent of films being shown at the festival are from women directors, including nine of the 22 films in official competition.

- 'Biting satire' -

In comparison with Cannes or Venice, Berlin attracts fewer big productions with A-list-heavy casts.

But that is not to say there are no big names on the programme.

"The Weight" features Russell Crowe and Ethan Hawke in a tale of a man forced to smuggle gold through the lethal wilderness of Depression-era rural Oregon.

Southern Germany stands in for the US Northwest in the film, one of an increasing number of American productions choosing to shoot abroad to save on costs.

In the official competition section, one of the most eagerly awaited films is "Rosebush Pruning", from Berlinale favourite Karim Ainouz, billed as "a biting satire about the absurdity of the traditional patriarchal family".

The cast boasts Elle Fanning, Callum Turner, Jamie Bell and Pamela Anderson, who are sure to be some of Saturday's red-carpet highlights.

German actress Sandra Hueller, who attracted international acclaim for her roles in "Anatomy of a Fall" and "The Zone of Interest", stars in Markus Schleinzer's "Rose", in which she plays a woman passing herself off as a male soldier returning to a German village in the early 17th century.

Also in the competition section, Amy Adams stars as a woman leaving rehab and confronting buried trauma in Kornel Mundruczo's "At the Sea", while in Beth de Araujo's "Josephine", Channing Tatum plays the father of a child traumatised by witnessing a violent crime.

L.Hussein--SF-PST