Favourites line up for Berlin Film Festival's top awards

By Andrew McCathie Feb 16, 2006, 17:51 GMT

The undated picture released on Tuesday, 14 February 2006, shows a scene from the film \'Road to Guantanamo\' showing blindfolded prisoners leaning against a wall. The film deals with the fate of four British Muslims who were held wrongly as prisoners under inhumane conditions at the infamous US prison camp Guantanamo after the 9-11 attacks in the US. The film is considered a favourite to win the Berlinale Award at this year\'s 56th International Film Festival in Berlin. The festival started on 09 February and continues until 19 February in Berlin. EPA/-

Berlin - After a slow start to this year's Berlin Film Festival, a raft of stars and films have emerged as favourites to win the Berlinale's top honours as the festival enters its final days.

Leading the line-up of movies thought to be in the running for the coveted Golden Bear is 'The Road to Guantanamo,' a film by British directors Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross about the torture and mishandling of terrorist suspects at the US military camp in Cuba.

The premiere of the politically-charged Guantanamo movie, which blurs the line between documentary and feature film, helped to fire up the festival at the mid-way point.

Veteran American director Robert Altman's musical tribute to the marvels of live radio, 'A Prairie Home Companion', is also thought to be vying for top honours, along with 'Sehnsucht' ('Longing') by German director Valeska Grisebach.

Young Australian actors Heath Ledger - nominated for an Oscar for his role in the gay cowboy movie 'Brokeback Mountain' - and Abbie Cornish have been mentioned as possible candidates for Best Actor and Best Actress awards after playing a love-addicted junkie couple in 'Candy' by Sydney-born director Neil Armfield.

The couple's life takes on a roller-coaster ride as they sink deeper into heroin addiction, with Cornish playing a young middle- class woman who has fallen for a lank-haired loser, played by Ledger.

Another possible contender for a best acting award is Vienna-born Paulus Manker, who played a hapless alcoholic poet in Austrian director Michael Glawogger's 'Slumming.'

A previous Golden Bear winner, Robert Altman's 'A Prairie Home Companion,' which stars Woody Harrelson and Meryl Streep, was seen as offering a measure of light-hearted relief in a programme which has been dominated by films exploring the harder edge to everyday life.

Speaking at a press conference following the premiere in Berlin, Streep said that the movie helped to recreate something that was part of her childhood in the United States. 'We grew up listening to the radio in a more innocent time,' she said.

Set in a small village just outside Berlin, 'Sehnsucht' tells the story, in a slow-moving almost documentary style, of a young married man whose mundane life is suddenly turned on its head after he has an affair with another woman.

A total of 19 films have been competing at the 2006 Berlinale for the festival's Golden and Silver Bears. The jury is to announce the award winners on Saturday.

But as past years have shown, the choices of the festival's juries tend to be very difficult to predict. Films that caused little excitement among reviewers have been selected in the past, and sometimes special last-minute awards are created.

With this in mind, 'Grbavica,' a film by Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic about the agony of women raped during ethnic cleansing campaigns has also drawn favourable comment at the festival and could be in the running.

The 31-year-old Zbanic's first feature film tries to illustrate the suffering of a Bosnian Muslim woman who gave birth to a child after being raped by a Serb soldier.

Named after a settlement in Sarajevo that was occupied by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 'Grbavica' is the first ever Bosnian movie to be competing at one of the world's most prestigious film festivals.