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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

It’s hard enough as it is getting up early each morning for the earliest screenings – and in the Berlin cold – without the knowledge that the first film of the day has the dispiriting English title Our Grand Despair. Turkish competition entrant Bizim Buyuk Caresizligimiz, which follows a girl whose parents have recently perished in a car crash, could have been a truly harrowing start to the day were the title taken to its most literal extreme. Instead it turned out to be the opposite: a warm and funny film about friendship and love – bittersweet perhaps, but not at all depressing.

Surprisingly the title does not really refer to the grief of the young girl, Nihal (Gunes Sayin), who overcomes her sadness – at least on the surface – fairly early on. Instead it is about the lighter and more comedy-friendly – though no less real – despair of two men,...

Now we know why this announcement was put on hold. Seeing as both fests are back to back and one ends up supplying the other, Sundance John Cooper kindly obliged before annoucing the inclusion of Miranda July's The Future, a German-u.S co-production title that Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick is obviously pleased to include in his festival. After announcing that the Coen Brothers’ excellent True Grit would open the comp, here comes the first batch of 8 competition titles which include a Wim Wenders film we actually want to see, Turkish filmmaker Seyfi Teoman's Our Grand Despair and one filmmaker who we were sure was headed to Park City will instead receive a huge showcase in Berlin in Victoria Mahoney’s “Yelling to the Sky”. Here's the complete list of titles: “Bizim Büyük Çaresizligimiz” (Our Grand Despair); Turkey / Germany / Netherlands by Seyfi Teoman (Tatil Kitabi/Summer Book) with Ilker Aksum,...