BERLIN (Reuters) – “Child’s Pose”, a Romanian drama about a domineering mother using her social position to try to save her son from jail, won the Golden Bear for best picture at the Berlin film festival on Saturday.

The movie, directed by Calin Peter Netzer and starring Luminita Gheorghiu in the central role, had been among the favorites for the coveted prize, which extends the remarkable success of Romanian filmmakers on the European festival circuit.

BERLIN, Feb 15 (Reuters) – DreamWorks Animation’s new 3D
adventure “The Croods” brings the prehistoric age to the 21st
century in the form of a dysfunctional family of cave dwellers
forced to flee the comforts of home and search out a new life in
the unknown.

“Never not be afraid” and “Fear keeps us alive” are the
mantras for Grug, the ape-like father voiced by Nicolas Cage and
whose first instinct is always to find a cave, block up the
entrance and stay there as long as possible.

BERLIN (Reuters) – If older women can’t find work in Hollywood they might want to come to Berlin, where this year’s film festival has been studded with performances by seasoned actresses that have put them and their movies in the running for top prizes.

The 11-day cinema event, centered around the main competition of 19 films but showcasing hundreds more, winds up with an evening awards ceremony on Saturday.

BERLIN (Reuters) – American actor River Phoenix has returned to the big screen 20 years on from his death after “Dark Blood” director George Sluizer salvaged the footage of his incomplete 1993 film and filled in the gaps with voiceovers.

Phoenix was considered one of the most promising performers of his generation before he died suddenly of a suspected drug overdose aged 23, 10 days before shooting on “Dark Blood” was scheduled to finish.

BERLIN (Reuters) – When Bosnian director Danis Tanovic learned about a Roma family refused emergency medical care because they could not pay for it, he not only decided to turn their story into a film but managed to convince the couple to play themselves.

The result is “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker”, a simple, powerful tale of one man’s struggle to provide for his partner and two daughters and of a society where money is apparently more important than human life.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Cinema has a new odd couple in “Prince Avalanche”, a low-budget film set in the remote, fire-ravaged forests of Texas and starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as an unlikely pair of workers painting markings on a seemingly endless road.

The tedium of their work allows space for them to argue, bicker, compete and bond in David Gordon Green’s oddball remake of a 2011 Icelandic movie called “Either Way”.

BERLIN (Reuters) – The story of French sculptress Camille Claudel is almost impossibly sad, and Juliette Binoche attempts to portray that tragedy in a new film set in an asylum where the actress performs alongside mentally disabled patients.

“Camille Claudel 1915″, in competition at the Berlin film festival, depicts three days in the life of an artist who spent her last 29 years in a mental institution in southern France, confined against her will by her family.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Iran’s Jafar Panahi has defied a 20-year ban on filmmaking to secretly co-direct “Closed Curtain”, a multi-layered portrayal of how restrictions on his work and movement have brought on depression and even thoughts of suicide.

The movie, in competition at the Berlin film festival, has its premiere on Tuesday, but Panahi was not expected on the red carpet despite festival organizers saying the German government had requested he be allowed to travel.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise the roles of Jesse and Celine in “Before Midnight”, the third but not necessarily the last movie in their long-running series based on the same characters as they age over time.

In this film, set 18 years after “Before Sunrise”, the couple is on holiday in Greece and we learn that they live with their twin daughters in Paris while Jesse’s son has stayed with his mother in Chicago.

BERLIN (Reuters) – British actor Steve Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom reunite for “The Look of Love”, a biopic of pornography publisher and night club impresario Paul Raymond that brings to the screen the sleaze, success and tragedy in his life.

Dubbed the “king of porn”, or, more politely, the “King of Soho” after the London area where his empire was based, Raymond began amassing his fortune in 1958 with the opening of the “Raymond Revuebar” and expanded to theatre and men’s magazines.