By Geir Moulson
BERLIN (AP) --The first of the year's major European film festivals got underway in Berlin on Thursday with a strong contingent of movies from female directors, which jury president Juliette Binoche greeted as "a good step forward."
The 69th Berlin International Film Festival was starting with Danish director Lone Scherfig's "The Kindness of Strangers," which follows an ensemble of characters through a New York City winter. It is the first of 17 contenders for the event's top Golden Bear award, whose winner will be announced Feb. 16.
The honors will be awarded by a six-member jury under French actress Binoche, who noted that there are seven films by women directors this year.
"I think that's a good step forward, and 10 years ago it was not like that," Binoche told reporters. "So I think we're opening hearts, minds and eventually bodies."
British producer, director and actress Trudie Styler, a fellow juror, said that having 41 percent of competition films directed by women was "a stepping-forward moment."
Competitors this year include Agnieszka Holland's "Mr. Jones," following a Welsh journalist's experience of the 1930s famine in Ukraine, and Isabel Coixet's "Elisa & Marcela," a love story between two women in Spain over a century ago that is a Netflix project.
There are new productions from previous Golden Bear winners Fatih Akin — "The Golden Glove," based on the story of a 1970s German serial killer — and Wang Quan'an, with "Ondog."
This year's "Berlinale" is also the end of an era. It is the last under Dieter Kosslick, the event's director for 18 years.
He will be succeeded next year by a double-headed team of Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek. Locarno film festival chief Chatrian will become artistic director and Rissenbeek, a German movie industry official, will be managing director.
The Berlin festival, held in gray February weather in the German capital, doesn't match the glamor of its cousins in Cannes and Venice. But Kosslick has always prided himself on the fact that it is open to a wider audience, with some 400 films screening in various sections.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More