"When I was invited to join the Dogma brotherhood, my only requirement was that there was film in the camera," says Danish director Søren Kragh-Jacobsen (last in competition with Øen i fuglegaden/Island on Bird Street in 1997), whose Mifunes sidste sang (Mifune's Last Song) - the third feature produced according to the Dogma 95 manifesto &endash; unspools today in the Berlinale competition.

"At the time I felt that I had become more and more confined by the technical aspects of film-making," he adds. "I felt that I had lost the spontanaeity that had once driven me like fuel. This was an opportunity to get back to the family and the closet play," adds Kragh-Jacobsen.

The title of his film refers to the late Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, the wannabe samurai in the main character Kresten's favourite film, Akira Kurosawa's Schichibnin no Samurai (Seven Samurai). Realising that his brother lives in horrible conditions, Kresten finds him a housekeeper, who turns out to be a high-class hooker on the run. Jørn Rossing Jensen