SUBMITTED BY Timbo

December 1, 2003 — "The Missing" has been selected as one of 20 films in competition for the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear awards, to be chosen in February.

Festival Director Dieter Kosslick also announced that four other competition films have been selected for the annual festival, the first of the new year in Europe and one of the most prestigious.

The Wild West thriller from Howard, who won a Best Director Academy Award for the 2002 film "A Beautiful Mind," is set in 1885 and stars Cate Blanchett as a settler who gets her estranged father, played by Tommy Lee Jones, to help find her abducted daughter.

The film debuted in the United States last week but is allowed in the competition because it will not be released outside the United States until after the festival.

The Berlinale, which runs from February 5-15, will announce the rest of the films in the competition in the course of the next several weeks, Berlinale officials said.

Other entries already picked include: "Nightsongs" by German director Romuald Karmakar, "Your Next Life" by Spain's Manuel Gutierrez Aragon, "Witness" by Croatia's Vinko Bresan, and "Minor Mishaps" by Denmark's Annette K. Olesen.

Read the rest at the link below.