At the Berlin International Film Festival, the Bosniac Roma actor won a Silver Bear for best actor for his performance in An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker, a docudrama by Danis Tanovic, in which Mujić plays himself. The film was also awarded the festival's Grand Jury Prize.

The Golden Bear for best film was awarded to Child’s Pose, by Romanian Călin Peter Netzer.

As the film industry gathers in Berlin for the February 7 opening of the Berlinale Festival, the weekly Die Zeit reports on the story of the "stolen film" which sums up the industry's struggle against piracy.

In a long tale, Die Zeit explains how German producer Stefan Arndt tried in vain to earn money from box office revenues from his film Cloud Atlas, before pirates could put a copy on line. A three-hour epic which begins in 1849 and closes with the end of the world 500 years later, the film cost €100m to produce and an additional €100m for marketing and distribution.

As of the summer of 2012, says Die Zeit, Arndt noted that his film was targeted by pirates because eight weeks before the world premiere:

Thousands of people were already registered on on-line file sharing sites for an illegal copy of Cloud Atlas.

Released in Russia a week after the US premiere, at the request of a Russian co-producer, the film was pirated in Khimki, Russia and put on-line in November. Thanks to a digital tracking system of the sound and the image each copy can be attributed to a specific screening, explains the weekly. However, those responsible for the pirate copies – those who record, put on-line, own the pirate sites, own data stocking servers – are lost among front companies and false identities throughout the world.

A few days before the opening of the Berlinale, dozens of illegal copies of Cloud Atlas were already on line, in a multitude of dubbed or subtitled versions. To date, the film has earned €85m of the €200m invested.

Ironically, the weekly adds, Google, the world leader in the highly lucrative sector of matching pirate sites with advertisers, is supplying 100 per cent of the financing for Berlin's Institute for the Internet and Society at Humbolt University, one of whose members is an advisor to German MPs.

On January 27, National Geographic channel will broadcast the first international film about the Smoleńsk air crash in which Polish president Lech Kaczyński was killed on April 10, 2010.

The film “is likely to create a stir” as it undermines a report by the Russian state committee investigating the causes of the tragedy, and backs most of the conclusions of a Polish inquiry led by former interior minister Jerzy Miller.

“Pokłosie (Aftermath) under attack”, headlines Gazeta Wyborcza as Polish director Władysław Pasikowski’s latest film sparks controversy. Inspired by the story of some three hundred Polish Jews murdered in the village of Jedwabne in Nazi German-occupied Poland in 1941, Aftermath depicts men, women and children being herded into a barn by their Polish neighbours and burned alive. Conservative commentators have lambasted the movie, arguing it puts collective blame on the whole nation and presents a false view of history in which Poles are shown as “evil anti-Semites” and “Holocaust co-perpetrators”. Piotr Zychowicz stresses in the conservative weekly Uważam Rze –

No nation has a monopoly on being evil and no nation has a monopoly on being good. Nations are composed of millions of people, and people, it so happens, are very different.

The liberal Gazeta Wyborcza appeals, in turn, for commentators to stop trying to halt the “cleansing process” with “nationalistic ideology”. It points out, quoting Tomasz Gross’s famous book, Neighbours, that there were Poles who killed Jews simply for profit. The daily defends Aftermath, calling it a –

... valuable work, unique in Polish cinema, reopening an only superficially healed wound of the Polish conscience.

“Polish miracle in Hollywood” headlines Rzeczpospolita, enthusing about the growing number of foreign film productions co-financed by Polish companies. Over the next two years, the Warsaw daily notes, “we can expect at least 10 film premieres co-produced by Polish businessmen”.

Coming projects include a project by the American director Gus van Sant and a film that will feature one of the Australian stars: Russell Crowe, Eric Bana or Geoffrey Rush. According to Rzeczpospolita, this development is a side-effect of the global economic crisis, as “many smaller studios are looking for business partners in order to survive.” 

On the other hand, “Polish investors have discovered that success in Hollywood has a unique taste that can’t be compared to any premiere in Poland.” Budding film moguls questioned by the paper showed little interest in investing in domestic film productions. “I have a simple principle: I can’t lose money on films,” one of them revealed.

Under the sober headline of "new light cast on Bergman’s origins," Dagens Nyheter reveals a piece of news that will send a shockwave through the world of Swedish culture. According to DNA analysis, "in all likelihood Ingmar Bergman was not the biological son of his mother, Karin Bergman," reports the daily, which reports that "the news adds support to a hypothesis that Bergman, who was the child of another woman, was switched at birth."

In response to the book which announced the theory about the film director who died in 2007, his niece, Veronica Ralston, ordered the DNA tests whose results have now been disclosed. The book claimed that Karin Bergman, was ill when she had a child who may not have survived. Bergman’s father allegedly switched this child with a baby that he had with another woman. "If this information is true, it will cast a new light on Bergman’s filmography," in which his mother plays a central role, points out a Dagens Nyheter columnist, who also wonders "how writer Henning Mankell will treat the disclosure in the TV series he is writing about Bergman’s life."

“The villain,” reads the caption of a photograph of film-maker Lars von Trier in the Danish daily Berlingske. Reacting to comments made by the enfant terrible of Danish cinema at the Cannes Film Festival that he “understands Hitler a little”, the paper writes that von Triers “is probably not a Nazi [but] this type of statement is so offensive, stupid and tasteless that it cannot just be ignored”. Yet the Danish press didn’t react to von Trier’s comments until he was excluded from the festival. Festival management has “drawn a welcome red line which signals – even for so-called geniuses – that there is a limit to the nonsense and insults one can proffer,” writes the daily Jyllands-Posten, which, in 2005 defended freedom of speech after it published some controversial caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.

"Farewell to the master of Italian comedy", headlines La Stampa. Mario Monicelli, director of La Grande Guerra (The Great War – 1958) and I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street – 1959), killed himself by jumping from the 5th floor of a hospital in Rome. He was 95 and suffering from a terminal cancer. "In his final months, he embraced the protests against cuts to culture, encouraged young people to rebel for a better future, complained that the cinema of today could not talk about Italy as it is, but he couldn’t see a future for himself,” writes La Stampa. In a country where euthanasia is still taboo, his death was a final proclamation of freedom in an anarchic life. "He wanted to decide everything all by himself right to the end, as in his movies", commented critic Paolo Mereghetti to Corriere della Sera.

"France has lost its mirror", announces Libération, following the news of the September 12 passing of French filmmaker and New Wave pioneer Claude Chabrol, at the age of 80. "A less than flattering mirror", continues the daily, making note of a career that stretched over more than 60 films in which this "bon vivant" delighted in creating "scathing portraits of the underside of French society", most notably "of life in the provinces and of the bourgeoisie.

"Salonta, where we take the pulse of migration,” says Evenimentul Zilei, welcoming positive feedback following the world premiere of Morgen on August 7, the 63rd Locarno film festival (Switzerland). The first feature film by Romanian director Marian Crisan, this Franco-Romanian-Hungarian co-production tells the story of the friendship that develops between a Romanian living in Salonta, near the Hungarian border, and a Kurd he saves from drowning in a river. While the Kurdish man dreams not only go to Germany to join his son, her rescuer hosts within his family and tells him he can leave "morgen" – "tomorrow" in German.

The general staff of the Danish army has started an investigation of war crimes possibly committed by soldiers in Afghanistan, after Janus Metz’ documentary Armadillo was screened at Cannes as an entrant in the Critics’ Week. In the film, explains the Jyllands-Posten, Danish soldiers talk about “executing” wounded Taliban fighters during a skirmish on 25 June 2009, which would indeed constitute a war crime. The film is not slated for commercial release till 8 July, but reactions already break down by political persuasion, adds the paper: left-wing viewers see it as a portrayal of a “Danish Vietnam”, the right as a “monument to the heroic efforts of Danish soldiers”.

Corriere della Sera reports that there will be no official Italian government delegation at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which is scheduled to begin on 13 May. Minister for Culture Sandro Bondi has announced that he will not participate to protest against the showing of Draquila  – a docu-fiction, by comic actress Sabina Guzzanti, critical of the Silvio Berlusconi government's management of the aftermath of the 2009 Aquila earthquake – which he has dubbed "a propaganda vehicle that is an insult to the truth and the people of Italy." Another Italian daily, La Repubblica remarks that "Bondi would do better to focus on the shortage of cultural funding in Italy, which spends seven times less than neighbouring France." Corriere reminds its readers that the minister is in a hot seat now that his name has been linked to  a corruption scandal involving slush funds for government contracts, which resulted in the resignation of his colleague, former Industry Minister Claudio Scajola, last week.

Dieter Kosslick, director of the Berlinale for the past decade, has come out with yet another witticism in the punning slogan "Happy Bärsday" (i.e. Happy Bear’s Day, the bear being the official symbol of both the film festival and the city of Berlin). But as the 60th edition of the Berlin filmfest gets underway, the Tagesspiegel has lashed out against "German cinema’s leading lobbyist". Between "mass and class”, Kosslick clearly opts for the former, bewails the Berlin daily. The Berlinale has grown, to be sure, and its director is as “funny” as ever. But he has failed to “cosmopolitanise” the event. "In his profoundly Social Democratic efforts to come across as the people’s cinematic benefactor, Kosslick has over-compartmentalised the Berlinale.” Worse still, “By rolling out the red carpet for [untried] German filmmakers he is provincialising the International Film Festival.” Instead, opines Der Tagesspiegel, the director ought to try to attract more masterpieces to compete with Cannes and stop giving the official competition short shrift.

For the first time, cinema audiences will be able to see the official American documentary of the first Nuremberg Trial. Commissioned by the US War Department and made in 1946 by the Schulberg brothers, Budd and Stuart, Nuremberg – its lesson for Today was never shown outside Germany, because the American government of the time believed that "shocking footage of the deportation of Jews, concentration camps, gas chambers and mass graves would undermine public support for the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe," explains De Volkskrant. The daughter of one of the directors, Sandra Schulberg, worked for five years on the restoration of the film which will be given a new European premier in Dutch capital The Hague, which is home to many of the world's international courts.

The Czech government is launching a subsidy program for "quality European films", that should help to revive a long cinematic tradition. Under this scheme, says Lidové Noviny, local and foreign producers of films made in the Czech Republic could get back up to 20% of their investment. "This isn't a grant for big, rich producers", states the Prague-based newspaper, quoting the country's culture minister. The daily goes on to explain that films, documentaries and television series will have to undergo a "cultural test" following which, a soon to be established commission, will ascertain whether the work in question has "a certain quality relating to European culture".

"The car, which has been a feature of Romanian daily life for decades now has a starring role in a film," announces Cotidianul in its report on My Beautiful Dacia. The European coproduction, directed by Spaniard Julio Sotto and Romanian Stefan Constantinescu, will be premiered on 28 August at the World Film Festival in Montreal (27 August to 7 September). "The 75-minute documentary is a light-hearted essay on Romania's odyssey from the communist era to the present day, which focuses on the role played by one of the country's best-loved symbols."

Luke and Lucy: The Texas Rangers (original Flemish title: Suske en Wiske: De Texas Rakkers, original French title: Bob et Bobette et les diables du Texas, a CGI animated adaptation of the comic book by Willy Vandersteen (the Flemish Hergé [of Tintin fame]) is hitting Belgian cinemas today, 22 July.

The French-language daily Le Soir acclaims this Walloon-Flemish coproduction in a country torn by tensions between the two language communities. For this bound-to-be blockbuster – “the most expensive spaghetti Western in the history of Flemish cinema at €9.6m” – the (Flemish) producer enticed animators from the Walloon firm of CoToon Studios, already famed in the “European West” for their contributions to Max&Co and The True Story of Puss’N Boots. “In our country, Suske en Wiske is the perfect example of a great North-South collaboration,” raves CoToon Studios’ managing director. Suske en Wiske and Bob et Bobette are billed in both Flemish and Walloon versions respectively. There is even a special version for the Dutch, who prefer their own accent, of course…

In the 1970s, the lady who never wanted to go home at night sparked a revolution in the world of dance, and became one of modern Germany's greatest cultural representatives. In the wake of her death yesterday aged 68, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praises her ability to produce "dance that was about all of us." The daily goes on to eulogise her talent for "mixing theatre with dance that had hitherto been silent, and orchestrating the resurgence of everyday language through untamed gesture, which made her the queen of dance on every continent." The choreographer whose motto was "I'm not interested in how people move, only in what moves them," revitalised her medium with creations that were marked by serious social criticism and humour infused with sadness.

In the realm of "simple stories and spectacular images" Yann Arthus-Bertrand is king. The Parisian photographer who has just released Home, his new film that saves our planet, is so "gifted, engaged and altruistic (…) that you can’t help but love him" gushes Neue Zürcher Zeitung… with its tongue in its cheek. According to the Swiss daily, YAB, as he is known, has drummed up extraordinary media hype over a work that is "eco-ecumenical, and bereft of any nuance." Man and nature pitted against one another "in a long-winded plea against the relentless exploitation of the land, the forests and seas." YAB has allowed his sponsor, luxury giant Pinault-Printemps-Redoute which had invested €10m "to buy not only a clean conscience, but also a worldwide advertising campaign. In the protection of the environment, as in advertising, it seems the end justifies the means."