European Films

The Competition Jury of the upcoming Berlin Film Festival will be chaired by US director and screenwriter Paul Schrader, it was announced today. The writer of Scorcese's Taxi Driver and Raging Bull also directed several films, including the 1992 crime drama Light Sleeper, which was part of the Berlinale Competition that year. He will be joined by Palestinian actress Hiam Abass, recently seen in the 2005 Competition entry Paradise Now from Hany Abu-Assad and in Christmas tale The Nativity Story, in which she starred as Anna. Mexican actor Gael García Bernal is also part of the jury, and he will be returning to Berlin after he presented Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep there just last year. They will be joined by Willem Dafoe, Mario Adorf, Nansun Shi and Molly Malene Stensgaard.

German actor Mario Adorf and his American colleague Willem Dafoe are two of the most respected character actors of their respective generations (the latter, perhaps not coincidentally, is the actor  with whom Schrader as a director has worked more often than any other actor). Danish film editor Molly Malene Stensgaard (who edited most of Von Trier's films) and Hong Kong film producer  Nansun Shi (Infernal Affairs, Seven Swords) round up this year's jury. Last year's jury was chaired by UK actress Charlotte Rampling.

The festival will open on February 8 with the Olivier Dahan-directed Edith Piaf biopic La môme (La vie en rose) and will screen around twenty titles in competition. It will wrap up and announce the winners of the festival's Golden Bear and Silver Bears on February 18.

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