Despite that fact that the competition this year underwhelmed (see Shane Danielsen’s column) there were sill some pleasant surprises and curiosities out of the Berlin International Film Festival. Two recent releases premiered over the past couple weeks: Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island got a mixed response, a pretty fair approximation of the reaction to the film stateside, while Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer (out Friday in St. Pete) premiered to great acclaim and won the controversial filmmaker the Best Director prize. Polanski is still under house arrest in Switzerland and couldn’t attend the ceremonies. But those films weren’t the only big stories. Here are nine Berlin premiers you should be looking out for in 2010.
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2010.