Gala opening launches Berlin Film Festival

Berlin - A drama starring Sigourney Weaver as an autistic woman opened this year's Berlin Film Festival setting the stage for a stream of movies to be shown at the Berlinale exploring the often gritty and unexpected side of everyday life.

Picture showing the official programme magazines 'Berlinale Journal' of the 56th International Berlinale Film Festival in Berlin, Germany, Thursday 09 February 2006. The festival's official opening ceremony takes place Thursday evening. The festival runs until 19 February 2006 and features 396 films from 56 countries. 19 films, thereunder four German productions, compete for the festival's 'Golden Bear' award. EPA/Soeren StacheSet against the backdrop of small-town Canada, Snow Cake by British director Marc Evans stars Britain's Alan Rickman, 59, and America's Sigourney Weaver, 56, who plays Linda. Rickman's character, a taciturn Englishman called Alex, finds himself stumbling into the world of autism after Linda's daughter was killed after a juggernaut hit the car he was driving. Included in the programme for the gala opening of the Berlinale, which is one of the world's top three movie festivals, was the premiere of Snow Cake. Both Rickman and Weaver were among the stars attending the opening. Indeed, Snow Cake is one of 19 films vying this year for the Berlinale's prestigious Golden and Silver Bear top prizes, which are expected to be awarded at the end of the festival by an international jury headed by British actress Charlotte Rampling. It took Weaver a year to prepare for her role, meeting a number of autistic people and trying to get to grips with their intense sense of order and the preoccupations that are often a feature of their lives. 'There are so many misconceptions about autism. We have to see it as a gift,' she said at a press conference in Berlin. 'What I perceived was that they have a lot of problems in common. But they are all unique,' said Weaver, whose acting career includes Alien, Gorillas in the Mist and The Ice Storm. Spending time with autistic people meant, she said, that 'you learn how to play, you learn how to see things, you learn how to experience things and how jarring the world is.' But Weaver insists that Snow Cake is not necessarily about autism. 'I wanted to do a movie that was not about autism. But about a unique woman, who was also autistic.' The script for Snow Cake was written by Angela Pell, who herself has an autistic son and who she said has been a source of inspiration for many of the events that unfold in the movie. 'I wanted to write a film that showed that sometimes living with autism can be a pain but that actually most of the time it's really good fun,' she said. Music often plays an important part in the life of many autistic people as it does for Linda, with Evans using music throughout his film. 'Every time I think about the film I think about music,' Evans said. Evans believes that the surprise and what seems to be the sense of absurdity in how people with autism helped to inject a sense of almost comical relief into what is a tragic story. Rickman said the challenge for his character is 'coming to terms with a sudden loss to him and trying to figure out what loss it is to this woman.' Already suffering from the death of his son, Linda helps Alex to regain his bearings and to find himself. © 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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