Berlin film festival opens

Blanchett, who has two films at the festival, is set to make an appearance

BERLIN, Germany -- The world's most popular film festival opens in Berlin on Wednesday, with more than 400 films competing for the Golden Bear award.

Among the guests likely to visit during the two-week festival are Australian-born actress Cate Blanchett and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Also attending is expected to be Oscar-winning Russell Crowe with director Ron Howard to promote the this year's Oscar frontrunner "A Beautiful Mind."

Four German directors are competing for the prestigious Golden Bear award, the highest number for 25 years.

Twenty-three films are competing for the award and another 18 will premiere at the festival, which tends to reward less conventional efforts and native talent.

Films being shown include: "The Shipping News," starring Kevin Spacey; "The Royal Tenebaums," with Gene Hackman; "Iris," featuring Judi Dench as the late British writer Iris Murdoch; and "Minster's Ball," starring Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry.

Blanchett appears in two competing movies including "Heaven" and "The Shipping News," whereas Catherine Deneuve is a murder suspect in the French musical "8 Femmes" (Eight Women).

The Berlinale is one of the top three festivals in Europe behind Cannes and alongside Venice.

Although it lacks the international glamour of its European competitors its 400 films will attract an estimated 120,000 movie-watchers -- the biggest of all the festivals.

The festival's new director, Dieter Kosslick, said its scale made it popular.

Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi star in the opening film, "Heaven"

"We have this big audience. Normal people can go in. We have a real audience and we have real experts and 3,400 journalists. This is an explosive mixture and this is unique," he told Reuters.

The festival will also focus on building support for small production houses. The German film industry remains smaller than that of France, Italy or Spain.

It opens with the premiere of top German director Tom Tykwer's "Heaven," a mixture of thriller, love story and moral drama.

Before the show finishes on February 17 a re-mastered version of "The Great Dictator," -- Charlie Chaplin's 1940 anti-Nazi satire -- will be shown with crisper sound and brighter picture.