Berlin - British director Marc Evans' Snow Cake, a drama starring Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman about the friendship between an autistic woman and a man traumatized after a fatal car accident, is to open next month's Berlin Film Festival.
Organizers also announced Wednesday that among other films in the 26 movie line-up is director Robert Altman's comedy, A Prairie Home Companion, which is one of the 17 premieres to be shown in the main competition at the festival.
Altman has put together an ensemble cast, including Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Kline and John C. Reilly, to tell his tale about a legendary radio show which is taken off the air after thirty years.
Berlin festival goers will also have the chance to see Bennett Miller's biopic Capote, which portrays the dazzling and sometimes tragic American writer Truman Capote.
Capote, which this week secured a Golden Globe award for actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, is playing out of competition. The Berlin Film Festival runs from February 9 until February 19.
Following on from his success with In this World, a story about people smuggling, British director Michael Winterbottom has seized on another politically charged issue for his The Road to Guantanamo, which is to be premiered in Berlin.
The film traces three Muslims from Great Britain who were held without being charged at Guantanamo Bay prison camp for two years.
Hong Kong director Pang Ho-cheung's Isabella adds to the list of films competing at the festival from Asia. It tells the story of a police officer in Macao who is suddenly confronted with the fact that he is a young girl's father.
Having moved to focus on German cinema in recent years, the festival has also announced the names of another group of German films that are to compete for its prestigious Golden Bear.
This includes Oskar Roehler's Elementarteilchen (The Elementary Particles) and Hans-Christian Schmid's Requiem as well as Der freie Wille (The Free Will) by director Matthias Glasner.
Der freie Wille follows the story of a man who has been released from prison after serving twelve years for multiple rape.
It stars leading German actor Juergen Vogel, while Valeska Grisebach's Sehnsucht tells the tale of a story of a love triangle set in the German eastern provinces in
Indeed, European cinema again plays a leading role at this year's Berlinale with the festival's competition programme including Claude Chabrol's world premiere of L'ivresse du pouvoir (Comedy of Power).
French actress Isabelle Huppert plays an uncompromising magistrate who is investigating the managing director of a large group of companies.
Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep, about a young man who withdraws completely into his dreams and starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg, also forms part of the programme.
Italian director and actor Michele Placido has used a novel by a judge about the Mafia, terrorism, corruption and politics for his Romanzo Criminale (Crime Novel), which is to be shown in Berlin.
Danish-born Pernille Fischer Christensen makes her directorial debut at the festival with En Soap, which tells the story of the tragi-comic relationship between the owner of a beauty clinic and a transsexual.
Austrian director Michael Glawogger's Slumming will also have its world premiere in Berlin next month as well as an Argentinean- Spanish-German co-production of El Custodio (The Minder) by Rodrigo Morena.
Zemestan (It's Winter), from Iran by Rafi Pitts, about life on the outskirts of Teheran will also be premiered in Berlin.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
Your Talkback on this Story