By Mike Swanson Feb 10, 2008, 18:56 GMT
Berlin - Women are playing a leading role at this year's Berlin Film Festival, directing and starring in a host of entries covering topics from pop music to suicide bombers.
Spanish actress Penelope Cruz smiles during a photo call on her film 'Elegy' at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival in Berlin, 10 February 2008. The film runs in competition for th Silver and Golden Bears at the 58th Berlinale. EPA/JOERG CARSTENSEN
Madonna, Patti Smith, Tilda Swinton and Penelope Cruz are among the more glamourous celebs plugging their movies at what has become one of world's leading cinematic events.
But less-well known filmmakers and actresses who battled prejudices to bring their works to the big screen have also been entertaining audiences at the festival's sidebar events.
Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass takes on the Israeli establishment in director Eram Riklis' Lemon Tree, one of 32 films entered in the Panorama section showcasing independent and arthouse cinema.
Abbas plays Salma, a Palestinian widow who is confronted with the loss of her livelihood when the Israeli defence minister buys a home close to her lemon grove between Israel and the occupied territories.
When security officials declare the trees a threat to the minister's safety and order them cut down, Salma challenges the decision in the Israeli high court.
'It is about seeking a decent life in a situation we have to live in,' said Nazareth-born Abbas, 47, a member of the jury at last year's Berlinale and star of another Panorama entry, The Feeling Factor.
Underscoring the strong Israeli presence this year is Natalie Assouide's Brides of Allah, a documentary running in the Forum section focussing on experimental and unconventional work by young filmmakers.
In making her film, Assouide spent two years interviewing five female Palestinian would-be suicide bombers, who are now serving sentences in Israeli prisons.
Although her subjects do not reveal what lay behind their acts, none of them expresses remorse and the film is a disturbing reminder of the different realities in which people live.
Violence is also a recurring theme in Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, a vivid work set in Afghanistan by up-and-coming 19-year-old Iranian director Hana Makhmalbaf.
The movie, which is in the running for the top honour at the Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong in March, features in the Young Generation section of the Berlinale.
One of three entries from Iran, it tells the story of a 6-year-old girl who is harassed on her way to school by boys playing war games mirroring the violence they have witnessed.
The boys threaten to stone the girl and blow her up the way the Taliban blew up the giant Buddha statues in 2001 in Bamiyan, where many of the scenes for the film were shot.
Makhmalbaf, who comes from a well-know filmmaking family, started making movies when she was 14. She has received awards for her work at festivals in Venice, San Sebastian, Montreal and Tokyo.
Pop icon Madonna will be putting in an appearance on Wednesday for the world premiere of Filth and Wisdom, a comedy about the dream of ordinary people seeking to escape the drudgery of everyday life.
People who have seen the material girl's directing debut, which is not in the running for the festival's main awards, have described it as 'disappointing.'
Also on the music front, New York rock singer and poet Patti Smith narrates an intimate documentary about herself that American photographer Steven Sebring took 12 years to make.
Entitled Patti Smith: Dream of Life, the film captures the energy of Smith's prose and her music as well as conveying her strong political convictions and the importance of art in her life.
'Music is our universal communication,' she told a press conference on Saturday ahead of the screening of the movie. 'I want to inform people, make them wake up.'
The former pop rebel, who objects to being called 'the godmother of punk,' said: 'The film is very expressive of the fact that I'm a worker, engaged in being a citizen, in political activisim.'
'I'm a mother, I paint and take photographs, write and play the kind of music I evolved within,' said Smith, who recently turned 61.
British arthouse icon Tilda Swinton plays a manipulative alcoholic in Erick Zonca's thriller Julia, one of 21 films from around the globe that are in contention for the coveted Golden Bear awards.
Swinton also wrote and co-produced Panorama entry Derek, a biography of director Derek Jarman, who helped the actress to her screen breakthrough in 1986 with a role in Caravaggio.
Spanish beauty Penelope Cruz graces the screen in Elegy, where she plays opposite Britain's Ben Kingsley in a film based on a novel by Philip Roth.
Elegy is directed up up-and-coming Spanish auteur Isabel Coixet, who has won critical praise for her two previous efforts, My Life Without Me and The Secret Life of Words.
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