Strong women hold sway at Berlinale

Nicole Kidman plays British adventurer and spy Gertrude Bell in <i>Queen of the Desert.</i> Photo / AP

Only second time a woman director's film showing night.

New movies starring Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Juliette Binoche, Helen Mirren and Lea Seydoux will put women in the spotlight when they premiere at the 65th Berlin film festival, the Berlinale.

The 11-day event starting Thursday in the frosty German capital, the first major cinema showcase in Europe each year, will begin with Oscar-winner Binoche playing Josephine Peary, who accompanied her explorer husband Robert on treacherous Arctic expeditions, in Nobody Wants the Night.

The film is directed by Spain's Isabel Coixet, only the second woman in the history of the Berlinale to hold the coveted opening-night slot.

Dieter Kosslick, who has run the festival since 2001, said many of the more than 400 films that will screen focused on "strong women in extreme situations".

Kidman plays British adventurer and spy Gertrude Bell opposite former Twilight heart-throb Robert Pattinson as T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, in German veteran Werner Herzog's Queen of the Desert.

Blanchett joins Natalie Portman and Christian Bale in Knight of Cups, about the perils of fame, by reclusive US director Terrence Malick.

Kosslick said he hoped Malick, who won Berlin's prestigious Golden Bear top prize for The Thin Red Line in 1999 and the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2011 for The Tree of Life, would attend the red-carpet premiere.

Seydoux, the latest Bond girl in the British spy franchise, returns to Berlin with French director Benoit Jacquot in Diary of a Chambermaid, based on a novel already adapted by cinema greats Jean Renoir and Luis Bunuel.

British actor Mirren stars in Woman in Gold, the true story of Holocaust survivor Maria Altmann who fought the Austrian government for nearly a decade for restitution of valuable Klimt paintings that the Nazis stole from her family.

US director and screenwriter Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) will serve as president of the jury judging the 19 main contenders and handing out the Golden and Silver Bear prizes on February 14. Last year, Chinese director Diao Yinan's cop thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice took home the Golden Bear.

- AAP