Berlin Film Festival. (Festival Wraps).

BERLIN 2/6 - 17/02

Always the first essential international film event of the year, the Berlin Film Festival has also been one of the most divided. Like Cannes, it's organized into separate official sections-a competition, the Panorama and Kinderfest -- and unofficial sections -- the Forum and New German Cinema. In the last couple years, though, there seemed to be less and less co-operation, or even communication, between the different sections. Consequently, you couldn't help root for new director Dieter Kosslick, who took over the reins from Moritz de Hadlen, who served as festival head for 25 years.

A regular festival-goer could sense the change almost immediately. There was a definite bonhomie to the opening ceremony, which wasn't even destroyed by the elaborate security proceedings that preceded the two-hour-long event. Indeed, it felt like a love-in, with assorted dignitaries wishing Kosslick well, not one but two live bands, and Kosslick (easily the most approachable and funniest human being to ever run a major film festival) cracking jokes and hamming it up.

The ceremony in terms of length almost threatened to overshadow the opening film, Tom Tykwer's (Run Lola Run) much anticipated Heaven, based on a script written by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. A metaphysical allegory, Heaven features American actress Cate Blanchett as a widow whose attempt to kill a prominent businessman! drug dealer goes horribly awry, and Giovanna Ribisi as a young cop who falls for her. Split into three parts (hell, purgatory and heaven), the film's a singular and daring mix of realism and abstraction that divided audiences and won fierce supporters.

This year, the festival paid considerably more attention to recent German cinema. There were several entries in competition, and a new prominence was given to the New German Cinema section, which previously seemed marginalized. My favourite German entries were a paranoid, bizarre sci-fi parody shot in black and white called Planet of the Cannibals (reminiscent of last year's cult hit American Astronaut) directed by Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, and Henner Winckler's Klassenfahrt (Class Trip), which focuses on alienated teenagers and suggests early Maurice Pialat in its tough-minded sensitivity. It also boasts several fine performances including Steven Sperling as Ronny, an inarticulate lout who's part class clown, part loser and part underground man, and Sophie Kempe as Isa, the classmate with whom Ronny is obsessed. Also interesting was Burning Wall, a Panorama documentary about the largely forgotten members of the East German resistance movement, whose actions led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, yet have b een perversely unheralded.

By far the most celebrated film about German history at the festival was the Austrian documentary, Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, an audience prize winner. The film's subject is Traudl Junge, Hitler's personal secretary. It caused a stir on its own, but it became even more controversial when Junge died shortly after the film's premiere. Several people told me that they could sense the Junge's will to live ebbing as they were watching the film. However, the most impressive contributions were from South Korea. Jae-eun Jeong's Goyyangileal butaghae (Take Care of My Cat) is an exquisite drama about five young women, all recent high-school graduates, who try to hang on to their friendship despite the pressures of adult life. Layered and full of beautifully observed moments, the film is sweetly sympathetic to even its least likable characters. For example, a pompous and insensitive young office worker is humanized when she gets her surprise comeuppance. It is also lightened by unexpected moments of comedy. Take Ca re of My Cat recalls Shunji Iwai's international breakthrough, Love Letter, but in place of Iwai's lush, sombre romanticism, Jae-eun substitutes a subtle social conscience mixed with a well-developed sense of the collision between adolescent dreams and adult responsibilities.

At the other end of the aesthetic scale is Ki-Yong Park's Camel(s), a black-and-white digital video production that suggests Abbas Kiarostami's more demanding and formalist work. Ki-Yong drops us into the action with little or no explanation of who his two middle-aged characters are. Clearly they're involved in some sort of assignation, but the real focus is on their desperation and inability to communicate. When they finally make it to a hotel room, they wind up having a distanced and furtive encounter that leaves them lonelier than they were initially. The film is ferociously claustrophobic, not simply because the principals are confined to cars and restaurants or because Ki-Yong refuses to cut away or let us look away, but because it's penned-in quality perfectly mirrores the character's anomie.

There was a very sizable Canadian contingent at this year's Berlinale, including Catherine Martin's Man ages, Carl Bessai's Lola, Anne Wheeler's Soddenly Naked, Mike Hoolboom's Tom, Lynne Stopkewich's Lilith on Top and three Kinderfest entries: Guarav Seth's A Passage to Ottawa (which won a special mention from the Crystal Bear jury), Peter Markele's Virginia's Run and Maria Sigurdardotir's Canada/Iceland co-production, Regina. Stopkewich's underrated look at Sarah McLachlan's brainchild was part of an intriguing, markedly different subset of films concentrating on music. Wim Wenders's Ode to Cologne pays homage to local rock legends, BAP, and Mika Kaurismaki's exuberant Moro No Brasil is a history of Brazil's regional variations on the samba. Slyly funny (a blond giant, Kaurismaki seems like the classic fish out of water as he careens around the Brazilian countryside, interviewing musicians) and ferociously rhythmic, Moro No Brasil was probably the best example of and most seductive argument for the festival 's theme -- accept diversity.