Berlinale

When I got up to bid Khan adieu, he insisted "have a seat, I would like to ask you a couple of questions. Do you have the time?" Of course I did, for the greatest star in the firmament of Indian cinema!

One way for us to travel and experience what our fellow human beings are going through, is through cinema. And the Berlinale film highlights these kinds of films better than the Oscars or Golden Globes.

The Berlin Film Festival held the world premiere of the 4K restoration of Taxi Driver. After many viewings throughout my life, the movie, all red light and red blood and red anger, is still lingering in my mind.

Up-close and personal, filmmaker Aamir Khan is everything he appears to be in his films and more. He is known as a complete perfectionist. But most of all he is a Superstar, one with a capital "S."

Films can change the world, and it starts by affecting one individual at a time, reminding us we are all parts of a whole, world citizens first and foremost. This fact was noticeable at the Cinema for Peace dinner.

The new film Deutschland 09, composed of clips by thirteen German directors, reflects a sense of complicated history, and confusion about how to evolve as a society.

"I wanted to make a film that made me laugh as much as the script did when I read it. There is so much sadness in this world, I'd rather make people laugh for two hours if I can."

Anguish seeps in every shot of famed Polish director Andrzej Wajda's new film "Sweet Rush". The movie maintains a rhythmic shift between poetic melancholy and sharp pain throughout.

Happy Tears -- like the engaging director himself -- vulnerably exposes the inchoate emotions that children experience when facing not only aging parents, but memories of abuse.

Just what is the hotbed issue of 2009, what secret theme did all great filmmakers of the world have in their unconscious mind to unveil this year at the same time in their new films?

The winner of the Berlin Film Festival, Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow, begins with a shot of an aged grey-haired Peruvian woman recounting how she was raped by soldiers when pregnant.

I came to the Berlinale film festival to discover things, not be turned away by convention, commercialism, and artistic timidity.

We witness two hours of extreme violence--incursions, grenades, shoot-outs--and learn what most of us probably do not know, that killing the poor is part of Brazil national policy.

I marveled at the brown roots showing in thin lines across her part, but a fellow journalist explained that this too is a purposeful effect: without the roots, the hair would seem too blonde and age her.

I meditated during the screening of Majid Majidi's "The Song of Sparrows": breathing in and clearing the mind as I watched splendid images of the Iranian landscape rise to the screen and then subside.

Sometimes a film is just a pleasure. The consensus at Berlin was not to bother watching "The Other Boleyn Girl," based on Philippa Gregory's eponymous novel, and I was so glad I snuck in anyway.

A boy violently murders another child, a little girl he meets on a secluded path, and later, as a young man, is haunted by his deed.

It's a favorite at Berlin and up for eight Oscars: P.T. Anderson's "There Will be Blood" has the taut energy and well-contoured cinematography that makes for an audience treat.

Today's world premiere was hailed as the hottest ticket in town, but many people at the Berlin Film Festival were expecting Madonna's directorial debu...

BERLIN - Madonna recalled her struggle to break into show business on Wednesday as she presented her first effort as a movie director: "Filth and Wisd...