{mosimage}LONDON: The 10^th annual Kinoteka festival of Polish film (www.kinoteka.org.uk) celebrated 10 years of bringing contemporary Polish film and culture to London culminating with a gala concert of the music of Krzysztof Penderecki and Jonny Greenwood at London's Barbican.

BERLIN: A new Georgian Ukrainian German coproduction Ursus the Caucasian Brown Bear is set to shoot in the Ukraine and Georgia in July and August of 2012. The 3.3m USD coproduction goes into pre-production next month.

First screening: 12 February 2012

BERLIN: Diaz Don’t Clean Up That Blood directed by Italian director Daniele Vicari about the violent clashes at the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa was one of the interesting entries in the Panorama section of this year’s Berlinale. This feature film is intended to be an historically accurate recreation of the actual events that turned what was a social protest into a bloodbath that ended with many injured and one dead.

First Screening Tuesday 14 February

{mosimage}BERLIN: Russian producer Alexander Rodnyansky has set his sites on Hollywood with Jayne Mansfield’s Car, a period drama directed by Billy Bob Thornton. Rodnyansky is one of Russia’s most successful film producers with a number of international art house hits like Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Elena and Alexander Mindadze’s Innocent Saturday to his credit. This ensemble drama starring Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Duvall, John Hurt, Kevin Bacon and Robert Patrick has already been sold to the US for a major release establishing the Hollywood credentials of his AR Films shingle. So it looks like after Berlin Rodnyansky will be saying “Dasvidaniya Moscow” as he heads to the warmer climes of California for his future productions.

{mosimage}First Screening: Thursday 16 February

BERLIN: Danish director Nikolaj Arcel has brought to Berlin a lavish period costume drama that still manages to be character driven and emotionally satisfying which is quite a feat. The strong international sales that the A Royal Affair has had before its Berlin premier testify to his accomplishment.

{mosimage}PRAGUE: Vaclav Havel’s Leaving has dominated the nominations for the annual Czech Lions awards which will be held this Saturday 3 March 2012. The film was the first and only venture into directing for the former Czech president who died at the end of 2011. Leaving has garnered 12 nominations including Bert Film, Best Director and Best Screen play.

{mosimage}WARSAW: Polish director Marcin Janiec’s animated 3D short The Game has won two prestigious international awards. The short film about a life and death chess battle took Best of Show from the Indie Fest in California and Rising Star Award voted for by the jury of the Canada International Film Festival.

{mosimage}First Screening: Thursday 16 February

BERLIN: Hungarian director Bence Fliegauf’s powerful drama of a day in the life of a Romany family in a Hungarian village where a series of racist motivated murders is taking place is based on a true story.

{mosimage}First Screening Saturday 11 February

BERLIN: This is German director Christian Petzold’s third film in competition at the Berlinale following Gespenster in 2005 and Yella in 2008 and he deservedly won the Golden Bear for Best Director this year with his latest film Barbara. The film stars Nina Hoss who has starred in four of Petzold’s previous films and she turns in once again an outstanding performance as Barbara, a young doctor in the GDR awaiting her chance to escape to the West.

First screening: Saturday 11 February

{mosimage}BERLIN: Italian veterans Paolo and Vittorio Taviani deservedly took home a Golden Bear for Caesar Must Die a powerful depiction of a group of prison inmates’ performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The gritty documentary is a return to the Taviani’s earlier style that originally won them international acclaim after a long string of well-made but lesser works that did not bring the same energy and genius to the screen as this Berlin winner.