Winslet, Depp, Hopkins and Kirk Douglas top Berlin Film Fest line-up

Topping them all in the glam department, Oscar-winner Kirk Douglas will be on hand to accept a Golden Bear lifetime achievement award, and a retrospective of his movies will unspool for the anticipated 400,000 fest-goers. A Fritz Lang retrospective will also be a highlight of the festival, featuring the 1927 classic "Metropolis" and a number of Lang classics not seen on the big screen for decades.

A new documentary, Jan Harlan's "Stanley Kubrick - A Life in Pictures" will also be shown. And a restored 70mm print of Kubrick's l968 epic "2001: A Space Odyssey" will close the fest February 18. Besides the competition section, other festival sections will unveil some 500 films. One section alone, the Forum of International Film, will feature new features from Vietnam. In a stark departure from recent years, the awards competition lineup has veered away from the Hollywood "majors", opting instead for the "indies" and the "Euros" in this, the final festival headed by 22-year veteran fest director Moritz de Hadeln.

Underscoring that tendency, this year's festival opens Wednesday evening at Potsdamer Platz with Jean-Jacques Annaud's 95-million- dollar Stalingrad epic "Enemy at the Gates" which was shot in the Berlin area. out of competition for the Golden Bear award, the picture stars Joseph Fiennes, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Ed Harrison. Four films from the United States will be competing for awards: Spike Lee's "Bamboozled," Gus Van Sant's "Finding Forrester" starring Sean Connery and F. Murray Abraham, Sean Penn's "The Pledge" with Jack Nicholson and Sam Shepard, as well as Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic" with Michael Douglas and his new Welsh bride Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Two other American films are to be unspooled out of competition. They are Ridley Scott's "Silence of the Lambs" sequel "Hannibal", starring Anthony Hopkins, and Philip Kaufman's "Quills" with Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix and Geoffrey Rush. Italians are back this year with two pictures following a years- long spat between Italian distributors and the festival organizers which amounted to a virtual Italian boycott of the fest. The Italian entries are Giuseppe Tornatore's "Malena" and Ferzan Ozpetek's "Le Fate Ignoranti".

Among the likely Oscar contenders on view will be Lasse Hallstrom's "Chocolat", starring Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche, and Michael Winterbottom's "The Claim", both listed as British-Irish coproductions. The Anglo-Irish list is rounded out with John Boorman's "The Tailor of Panama", starring Pierce Brosnan and Jamie Lee Curtis, and Mike Nichols' "Wit", which stars Emma Thompson and Harold Pinter. France will be represented in the competition with three films: Catherine Breillat's "Ma Soeur," Patrice Leconte's "Felix et Lola" and Patrice Chereau's "Intamact."

Even two German productions are in the lineup, which has not always been the case in the past - much to the ire of local filmmakers. Jean-Jacques Annaud's English-language but German-made "Enemy at the Gates" will open the festival out of competition. The other "German entry" is Greek filmmaker Filippos Tsitos' "My Home Sweet Home". Over the past two decades, native Swiss de Hadeln has come under frequent fire from German critics and filmmakers for allegedly neglecting the domestic filmmaking industry. A year after he came to Berlin from the Lucarno fest a group of German directors even announced an abortive boycott - only to beg to return the following year.

Analysts speculate that the lack of German productions on view in Berlin over the years may have played a role in the decision last summer not to renew de Hadeln's contract. This is his last festival, and German-born film industry expert Dieter Kosslick takes up the reins for the 2002 fest. De Hadeln has been credited with favouring Asian films and this year is no different. Japan has one film in competition, and China and Taiwan are back with one each, as is South Korea. Africa is represented by a single entry from Algeria and Senegal. Argentina, Denmark, Poland and Spain round out the awards list.

(la/dpa)