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With only a few weeks to go until the Berlin Film Festival unspools, much of the competition lineup still remains a mystery. However, today has added some clarity with several titles unveiled. Among them, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s latest effort. The director, who is under house arrest and a 20-year filmmaking ban, nevertheless manages to get a movie out every couple of years. His last, Closed Curtain, stirred up controversy in Iran when it won the screenwriting prize in Berlin in 2013. This latest film, Taxi, stars the director, although other details were not immediately available.

Also in the mix is the world premiere, out of competition, of Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes, starring Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hiroyuki Sanada and Hattie Morahan. McKellen plays the titular detective as he nears the end of his days and revisits an unsolved case which forced him into retirement.

Werner Herzog...

Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Pattinson, added to Berlinale competition line-up; Mr. Holmes, starring Ian McKellen as an aged Sherlock, to play out of competition.

The 65th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 5-15) has added a further eight titles to its Competition programme, ahead of the complete line-up next week.

The films, which originate from across Europe, Asia, the Us and the Middle East, include the world premiere of Queen of the Desert, Werner Herzog’s biopic based on the life of British explorer Gertrude Bell.

Nicole Kidman plays the 19th century explorer, known as the female Lawrence of Arabia, and her co-stars include James Franco, Damian Lewis and Robert Pattinson (as Te Lawrence).

Berlinale 2015: new Competition films

Body

Poland

By Malgorzata Szumowska (Stranger, Elles, In the Name of)

With Janusz Gajos, Maja Ostaszewska, Justyna Suwala

World premiere

Cha và con và (Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories)

Vietnam / France / Germany...

Sebastian Schipper, Werner Herzog, Benoit Jacquot and Further Titles Added to the Selection

Another eight films have been selected for the Competition Programme of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival.

The productions are from the following countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Hong Kong/China, Iran, the People’s Republic of China, Poland, the USA, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.

Body

Poland

By Malgorzata Szumowska (Stranger, Elles, In the Name of)

With Janusz Gajos, Maja Ostaszewska, Justyna Suwala

World premiere

Cha và con và (Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories)

Vietnam / France / Germany / Netherlands

By Di Phan Dang (Bi, Don’t Be Afraid)

With Do Thi Hai Yen, Le Cong Hoang, Truong The Vinh

World premiere

Journal d’une femme de chambre (Diary of a Chambermaid)

France / Belgium

By Benoit Jacquot (Farewell, My Queen; Three Hearts)

With Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Clotilde Mollet, Hervé Pierre, Vincent Lacoste

World premiere

Mr. Holmes

United Kingdom

By Bill Condon (The Fifth Estate)

With...

With China‘s National Day holiday week still in swing, the box office got an extra boost this frame thanks to the timely release of Breakup Buddies, a sort of follow-up to 2012’s smash hit Lost In Thailand. Playing on half the screens in the massive market, the film grossed just under $38M in China this weekend, sending its cume since release on September 30 to about $93M. (It also went out in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand at the weekend.) The original film was arguably responsible for a reversal in China’s fortunes in December 2012, when box office share was lagging behind that of U.S. films. That year ended with Hollywood out front but Lost In Thailand made global headlines and bolstered the unofficial practice of blackout periods when no foreign studio movies are released, allowing high-profile local titles to goose box office in the People’s Republic.

Indomina Releasing will debut the period piece Sacrifice on DVD September 4, giving viewers a glimpse into China's Yuan Dynasty in 5th Century B.C. We're giving away copies of the DVD, directed by Kaige Chen. These discs will probably go fast, so hurry and enter today!

Winners Receive:

Sacrifice DVD

Here's How To Win!

Just "Like" (fan) the MovieWeb Facebook page (below) and then leave a comment below telling us why these prizes must be yours!

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Written and directed by Sacrifice DVD and set during the opulent Yuan Dynasty in the 5th century B.C., Sacrifice is the story of a newborn prince whose entire family, the Zhao clan, is wiped out by a rival general who ruthlessly seizes the throne. An ordinary man, the doctor who delivers the baby, gives up...

2012′s first major blockbuster, The Hunger Games, may still be a few weeks away, but there are still a handful of new films to check out at the theater for the weekend of March 2.

Being Flynn, from Little Fockers and American Pie Director Paul Weitz, gets released by Focus Features. The movie stars Paul Dano, Robert De Niro and Julianne Moore. If you’re looking for a little comedy/drama, then this will be your best bet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

CG and Animated film lovers, or their children, can check out Dr. Seuss’ the Lorax, which gets released from Universal Pictures. The film features the voices of Betty White, Danny DeVito, Ed Helms, Rob Riggle, Taylor Swift, and Zac Efron. The Lorax is from the creators of Despicable Me.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The latest teen-angst-party movie, Project X comes to theaters from Warner Bros.

Variance Films has released the first trailer and the second poster for the Chinese action drama Let the Bullets Fly, which hits theaters March 2. Click on the video player below for your first look at director Wen Jiang's new movie starring Chow Yun-Fat, You Ge, and Carina Lau. You can also take a look at the second poster below the trailer.

Click to watch Let the Bullets Fly Trailer!

In the lawless land that is rural China in the 1920s, legendary bandit "Pocky" Zhang (Wen Jiang) and his gang stage a train robbery. They are quite unhappy to discover that instead of silver, the only thing left on the train is the con man, Tang (You Ge). Desperate, Tang explains that he's on his way to Goose Town, where he's bought himself a governorship. If allowed to live, he will help Zhang assume the governorship in his place... where...

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent… this week we’ve got a dinner date with Shakespeare. By way of China. Ang Lee’s phenomenal Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon kicked off a decade of similarly beautiful wuxia epics with films like House Of Flying Daggers, Hero, The Promise, and Curse Of the Golden Flower. Lee’s film remains the best of the bunch by far, but one that comes close to equaling it in visual and aural beauty is The Banquet. It lacks the overwhelming emotion and heartbreaking romance of Lee’s Academy Award winning film, but it does have glorious imagery and cinematography, the always exquisite Zhang Ziyi, and a fine literary pedigree in a story based loosely on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Oh, it...

From Wen Jiang, the director of “The Sun Also Rises”, comes the period action/comedy “Let the Bullets Fly”. All you need to know is that it stars Jiang and Chow Yun Fat as badass men doing badass stuff in 1949 China, and those stuff apparently involves guns and swords and people bleeding. Or at least, that’s according to these two posters (via 24Fps). The plot for the film is typically cryptic, but it goes something like this: Bandit chief Jiang Wen, imposing as a mayor, meets tyrannical gentry Chow Yun-fat in a deadly battle of wit and brutality. The film co-stars Carina Lau, You Ge, and Jun Hu, and is currently being shopped around Cannes. Look for it in Chinese theaters later this year, and for you non-Chinese types, you’re probably looking at a 2011 DVD import release. The first poster is admittedly a little bland and generic, but...