ALEX'S FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS -- ANNO 2005 WITH A MERRY X-MAS TO ALL! 1.TROMSO, January -- A fantastic place to open the festival year if you love snow and don't mind fifteen minutes of daylight, MAX ...in January. That was just a joke, folks -- by late January you get almost a whole hour of sunlight -- around eleven AM -- but really, who needs it? ...when fest topper, irrepressible Norskie-American MARTHA OTTE, is guaranteed to provide a slate of such interesting films that you'll spend th...

24th Annual VIFF Announces Full Line-Up of Films and Events Vancouver, BC (September 7, 2005) – The 24rd Vancouver International Film Festival announced today that it will show 329 films, including 230 feature and mid-length films, at more than 500 screenings. The slate includes 8 World Premieres, 22 International Premieres, 38 North American Premieres, 59 Canadian Premieres and 10 English-Canadian Premieres. The Festival will open on September 29 with a Gala screening of Deepa Mehta’s WATER...

POLITICAL FILMS SETTING PACE IN BERLINWhereas last year it was all Hollywood glamour and glitz with such blockbusters as "Cold Mountain", "Monsters" and many more topping the bill, this year political films and films about famous political figures are gathering most of the attention. The hot ticket so far has been German competition entry "Sophie Scholl - The final Days" which takes up the case of a young lady who protested openly against certain actions of the Nazi regime, was subjected to a s...

German director Roland Emmerich will be president of the International Jury of the Berlinale 2005. Emmerich’s international career began with the film Das Arche Noah Prinzip (The Noah’s Ark Principle) which screened at the Berlinale in 1984 and attracted worldwide attention. Hollywood discovered this great talent, who then went on to make Independence Day, Godzilla and The Patriot, all Oscar-crowned works. In 2004, with The Day After Tomorrow, Emmerich contributed to the ongoing debate on th...