The Competition of the Berlinale 2004 will ultimately include a total of 26 films, 22 of them will compete for the Golden and Silver Berlin Bears. At the 54th Berlinale German cinema will be well represented once again. A total of 56 German productions will be screened in the different festival sections.

The three films from France are all world premieres:

Master director Patrice Leconte will present Confidences trop intimes (Intimate Strangers), a comedy about psychologists. A young woman wants to overcome her marital problems by consulting a therapist. Yet when she goes to her first session, she takes the wrong door and so confides to a tax consultant. Fabrice Lucchini, Sandrine Bonnaire and Anne Brochet star in the film.

With Feux Rouges (Red Lights) French director Cédric Kahn presents the film version of Georges Simenon’s 1953 novel of the same name. Kahn has set this tale of a married couple, however, in the midst of a crisis in present-day France. After quarrelling, the couple, performed by Carole Bouquet and Jean-Pierre Darroussin, continues their journey to pick up their children at holiday camp separately. Independently from one another, they both encounter an escaped criminal.


Eric Rohmer will present a political thriller in the competition. Triple Agent is set to historical events in 1936, when the Spanish Civil War is troubling Europe. Fiodor, a young Russian, takes refuge with his Greek wife in Paris. He openly admits to being a spy, but keeps mum about whom he is working for. The principal characters are played by Serge Renko, Katerina Didaskalu, Amanda Langlet and Emmanuel Salinger.