SHOWING TODAY
Hayao Miyazaki's bloodthirsty animated epic Princess Mononoke (screening in competition today at the Zoo Palast) is already the highest-grossing film ever in Japan. With Miramax's Dimension label handling the US release in July, Mononoke may well emulate the success of Japanese ballroom dance fable, Shall We Dance?, which grossed close to $10 million in the States. Miramax is also reported to be planning an English-language dub of the feature-length cartoon - one that will doubtless be altogether more violent in tone than the average Disney offering.
Jeroen Krabbe made a memorable Bond villain in The Living Daylights. Now he has turned his hand to directing. His debut feature, Left Luggage, the story of a young Jewish woman whose parents survived the Holocaust, screens today in competition, as does Valery Todorovsky's The Land of the Deaf, a hyper-charged thriller which shows both the poetry and the violence of life in modern-day Moscow. GM

UPDATE
In Panorama day the screening of Guerra de Canudos has moved from 14.00 to 13.30 at the International. Both the director and the producer will attend the screening. At 17.00 it will be followed by an advance screening of Darb al tabanat (official Panorama premiere on 21 February).

*Showing its concern and support for Berlin's unemployed, the festival has decided to offer unemployment benefit recipients a 50% discount on all Berlinale tickets.

*Eighty years after the founding of Berlin's UFA film studios, the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek and the Austrian National Library are putting 70 original UFA posters on display. 'UFA Posters - Film Premieres 1918-1943', is at the Kunstforum der GrundkreditBank, Budapester Strasse 35, daily from 10.00 to 18.00