BERLIN - Madonna recalled her struggle to break into show business on Wednesday as she presented her first effort as a movie director: "Filth and Wisdom," which made its debut at the Berlin film festival.

The singer-actress, who turns 50 this year, follows three young housemates in London who try to finance their dreams while working in unfulfilling jobs.

"One of the themes that I explore in the film is struggle, and if I look back to the beginning of my career I can recall those moments of struggle like it was yesterday," Madonna said at a news conference alongside her cast. "There are aspects of Holly, Juliette and AK's struggle that I could relate to completely, and I could access that memory and put it into the story."

Ukrainian immigrant AK -- played by Gypsy-punk singer Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello -- is an aspiring musician, self-styled philosopher and sometime sadomasochistic actor. Juliette (Vicky McClure) works for a lecherous pharmacist while she dreams of going to Africa to help children. Holly (Holly Weston), is an unsuccessful ballerina who resorts to working as a pole-dancer -- and the character who appears to relate most closely to Madonna, who recalled that she grew up wanting to be a dancer.

Madonna remembered "the cold harsh reality when I arrived in New York only to find that there were thousands of girls that wanted to do the same thing, and I wasn't so special after all -- that I was never going to be able to pay the rent ... and that I was going to have to do other things to feed myself."

Madonna stayed off the screen in "Filth and Wisdom." She said directing gave her a chance to "execute my vision," but conceded there was one drawback.

She said there was "one little tiny thing that was missing, that visceral release that you don't have if you're not performing -- so it was an adjustment for me to work from my neck up."

Asked what the future holds, Madonna said: "I look forward to making more music and making more films -- I'm very excited about both."

"Filth and Wisdom" started out as a short movie but grew into an 81-minute feature.

Madonna said she added scenes and fleshed out the characters after she "fell in love" with them and "decided that I wanted the story to go on more than 20 minutes."

The film's soundtrack is strongly influenced by Hutz, whose own band appears and who, Madonna said, "kept turning me on to new music" -- but it also includes pop moments such as the singer's own "Erotica."

The modern music was "made by people that I know, who I knew would give me songs and not charge me lots of money, and Britney (Spears) was one of them," she said. "Of course, I used some of my songs because I'm not going to charge myself."

A London resident, Madonna said she chose the city as the movie's location in part because she did not want to be away from her children -- but also because "I like how cosmopolitan it is there, and I thought it was the perfect place to make the movie."

"Filth and Wisdom" is showing in the Berlin festival's Panorama section, outside the event's main competition.

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