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Iraq, Iran, London films lead pack for Berlin Golden Bear

Few of the 18 films in competition managed to light up the 59^th annual event but critics praised a clutch of pictures from around the world.

“The guessing game ahead of the finale is as heated as seldom before,” Jan Schulz-Ojala wrote in the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel on Saturday.

“No single film has emerged as a clear favourite in a thin field of aspirants.”

An international jury led by Scottish Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton was to hand out the top prizes at a gala ceremony Saturday night.

“The Messenger” stars Woody Harrelson, an outspoken Hollywood peace activist, as an Iraq war veteran who must notify the loved ones of soldiers who have fallen in battle. The tears and anger of the bereaved take a heavy toll on Harrelson and a comrade, played by an impressive Ben Foster.

“London River” by Franco-Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb brings British actress Brenda Blethyn together with Malian actor and griot Sotigui Kouyate in a story of prejudice and grief in the wake of the 7/7 attacks.

They learn their adult children are missing after the four bombs exploded in the London public transport system in July 2005, killing more than 50 people, and are shocked to hear that the two were a couple.

“About Elly” by Asghar Farhadi was also broadly popular, about a woman who vanishes on a beach getaway, setting off a chain reaction that requires a group of chic urbanites to weave an ever-more-intricate web of lies to maintain the appearance of maintaining traditional social mores.

Reviewers also embraced “Storm” about a Bosnian gang rape victim mustering the courage to testify before the UN war crimes court in the Hague, and German director Maren Ade’s “Everyone Else”, a deceptively simple love story.

The end of the festival brought two dark-horse candidates. Legendary Polish film-maker Andrzej Wajda unveiled the moving, startlingly innovative drama “Sweet Rush” with a film-within-a-film motif.

And Peruvian director Claudia Llosa wowed viewers with “The Milk of Sorrow”, a delicate tale of survival in the wake of Peru’s two decades of terror inflicted by the Shining Path guerrilla group.

After what Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt called “screenings that were threatening to drown in a sea of sorrow over war crimes, racism and dysfunctional families”, audiences lapped up confections like “Cheri” starring a radiant Michelle Pfeiffer and “My One and Only” with Renee Zellweger.

But the festival, which ranks second only to Cannes in size and prestige, delivered more than its share of duds and disappointments.

Swedish arthouse hero Lukas Moodysson garnered boos with his flat, incoherent “Mammoth” starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams, and critics savaged British director Sally Potter’s “Rage”, a send-up of the fashion industry featuring Jude Law in drag as a supermodel named Minx.

France’s Bertrand Tavernier strongly divided audiences with his murder mystery set in New Orleans post-Katrina and starring Tommy Lee Jones, “In The Electric Mist”. And reviewers dismissed “Happy Tears”, a family drama with Demi Moore and Parker Posey as simply “weird”.

Festival director Dieter Kosslick, who has just extended his contract until 2013, defended his choices against the howling critics.

“One of the duties of a film festival is to follow a director on his or her career,” Kosslick told the Hollywood Reporter. “They don’t only make masterpieces.”

The 11-day Berlinale wraps up Sunday with screenings of the most popular films shown during the festival.