07/02/2007

The final countdown has begun for the 57th Berlinale, an edition that will be marked by the absence of Spanish titles in official competition and by a relatively pale Spanish presence in the festival's sidebar sections.

The most resonant name in Berlin will be Antonio Banderas, who is expected to attend the festival to introduce his second feature as a director, Summer Rain [+see also:
trailer
film profile], part of the Panorama Special section.

The film, recently shown in Sundance (see news), has so far garnered over 310,000 admissions and grossed over €1.6m at home, according to ICCA data. Summer Rain was co-produced by Banderas' US company Green Moon, together with Madrid-based Sogecine and the UK's Future Films.

Panorama Dokumente will present Invisibles, a collection of four documentaries and docudramas directed by Isabel Coixet, Fernado León de Aranoa, Javier Corcuera and Wim Wenders, on the harsh realities the Doctors Without Frontiers must face in their daily work. The film was produced by Javier Bardem (see news).

Two co-productions with Cuba – Camilla Guzmán Urzúa's The Sugar Curtain and Fernando Pérez's Madrigal – will be seen in the Forum and Berlinale Special sidebars, respectively. The Berlinale Special will also include The Lark Farm by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, an Italian/Spanish/French/Bulgarian co-production with an appealing international cast that includes Paz Vega, Moritz Bleibtreu and Angela Molina.

The new section Eat, Drink, See Movies will present the documentary The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab, directed by José Luis Lopez-Linarez.

Lastly, the Co-production Market line-up features four Spanish projects looking for an international partner: Aitzol Aramaio’s A Train in SP (Tusitala Producciones), Laura Mana’s La Roldana (Maestranza Films), David Planell’s La edad de los anfibios (Avalon Producciones) and the Norwegian co-production The Frost, produced by Alta Realitat Producciones and Original Films.