15/02/2006

At D–3 from the Bear Awards ceremony in Berlin, Robert Altman’s tribute to America’s favourite radio show in A Prairie Home Companion is the competitition entry that has received the biggest wave of support from film critics and festival participants. Bets are still wide-open however with five titles still to screen including the president of the Jury Charlotte Rampling’s confessed favourite Requiem [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Hans-Christian Schmid
interview: Hans-Christian Schmid
interview: Sandra Hueller
film profile], Hans-Christian Schmid’s portrayal of Germany’s last known exorcism, Australian film Candy starring Heath Ledger, Sidney Lumet’s drama Find Me Guilty and Claude Chabrol’s Comedy Of Power [+see also:
trailer
film profile] starring Isabelle Huppert.

Overall, the Berlinale 2006 competition has up till now been satisfactory for the 3000 plus journalists in town, with no real bad entry. Two feature film debuts were particulalry well received and will probably fight for this year’s new First Feature Film Award: A Soap [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lars Bredo Rahbek
interview: Pernille Fischer Christensen
film profile] by the Danish Permille Fischer Christensen about a tender friendship between a 32-year old liberated woman and her downstairs transvestite neighbour, and Grbavica [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Barbara Albert
interview: Jasmila Zbanic
film profile], a post-war Sarajevo drama by Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić.

The German Free Will by Matthias Glasner, a daring portrait of a rapist in search of redemption which split the critics in Berlin, is also the type of controversial entry that could well find a place in the final draw, and the Argentinian/German/French film El Custodio [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (The Minder) could offer Argentinian actor Julio Chávez a well-deserved Bear statuette in the leading acting category.