New movies starring Ethan Hawke, Lea Seydoux and Forest Whitaker will screen at the 64th Berlin film festival next month, along with a host of hard-hitting Asian fare, organizers said Wednesday. Completing its program for the competition at the 64th annual event, Europe's first major new cinema showcase of the year, the "Berlinale" said 20 pictures would vie for its Golden Bear top prize awarded on February Along with new features from George Clooney and Wes Anderson already announced, the festival will screen the keenly awaited "Boyhood", the latest collaboration between Hawke and U.
Also starring Patricia Arquette, the film was periodically shot over a decade and tells the story of a young son's relationship with his divorced parents. Seydoux, who picked up the Palme d'Or top prize in Cannes last May along with her director and co-star for the lesbian love story "Blue is the Warmest Color", takes the lead with Vincent Cassel in a Franco-German co-production retelling the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast".
Festival organizers announced three Chinese entries including "Black Coal, Thin Ice" by Diao Yinan about a cop investigating serial murders who learns all the victims are linked to the same woman.
Scandinavian production "In Order of Disappearance" starring Stellan Skarsgard and Bruno Ganz showing a drug war between the Norwegian mafia and Serbian gangsters will also premiere at the event.
German director Feo Aladang's "In-between Worlds" is billed as the first foreign feature to shoot in the Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz regions of northern Afghanistan and depicts the friendship between a German soldier and a local interpreter. Organizers had previously announced that Clooney would present his Nazi-era art thriller "The Monuments Men", while Anderson will unveil his all-star romp "The Grand Budapest Hotel" on opening night, February 6.
