For 10 days every February, the city of Berlin rolls out a red carpet called Berlinale to artistes and viewers in the movie business. Like every year, an exquisite collection of world cinema is on show — up to 400 films — at the 67th edition, which kick-started on February 9.

The sneaky (brown) bear, the festival mascot, is already on the prowl in Berlin. This year, it was found leaning against pillars — whether playful or frustrated at the political events rocking the world, is open to interpretation. In the words of German broadcaster DW, the animal in the posters looks “exhausted”.

There isn’t a better time for the festival to make a political statement or two than this year. Whether it is the Twitter administration of a reality TV star-turned-President or Europe’s right-wing nationalists who threaten to breach the continent’s unity, there is plenty of room for political statements, articulated and otherwise.

In keeping with its reputation, “rarely has a Berlinale programme captured the current political situation so intensely in images as it does this year,” writes Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick in his opening notes in the festival’s journal. “Many film artistes are looking for answers in the past. They are trying to understand the disconcerting present against the backdrop of history,” he adds.

Sure enough, there is Le jeune Karl Marx (The Young Karl Marx), directed by Raoul Peck, that explores the revolutionary’s friendship with Friedrich Engels and goes on to “describe the origins of the international Socialist movement, the emergence of the Communist League and its founding document, the Communist Manifesto.”

Director Aki Kaurismäki’s The Other Side of Hope follows Khaled, a Syrian refugee, who ends up in Helsinki, where he applies for asylum without much hope of success.

The festival’s statistics are impressive too. At the time of going to press, it has sold more than 335,000 tickets for public screenings. Berlinale and its fair dose of world cinema, glamour, and after-hour parties are estimated to be experienced by more than 20,000 film enthusiasts from 122 countries. That number includes around 4,000 journalists.

Interestingly enough for the Indian audience, Gurinder Chadha is returning with a historical drama called Viceroy‘s House , which examines the political background of events that led to the Partition of India. It also focuses on, among many other things, the role of Lord and Lady Mountbatten in the last days of the Raj. Screened outside competition, Viceroy’s House is an ambitious project that stars Downton Abbey ’s Hugh Bonneville and XFiles ’s Gillian Anderson alongside Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi and Om Puri. Chadha’s last was the widely panned 2010 British comedy It’s a Wonderful Afterlife .

Indian representation extends to the Manipuri documentary called Loktak Lairembee ( Lady of the Lake ), directed by Haobam Paban Kumar. The film examines how the resettlement plans of the residents around Loktak Lake threaten the day-to-day life of those who live on the islands on the waterbody. Also on the schedule is Becoming Who I Was , a Ladakhi documentary directed by Chang-Yong Moon and Jin Jeon. It tells the story of a boy named Angdu and his godfather, who set out on foot from Ladakh to Tibet in search of a spiritual homeland.

More excitingly, Hugh Jackman, who plays the craggy, bearded and almost unrecognisable Logan , third in the Wolverine franchise, is premièring outside competition alongside the global première of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting 2 , sequel to his 1996 black comedy.

The coveted Golden Bear and Silver Bear entries will be judged by a panel of seven. Prominent among them is the jury president Paul Verhoeven, Dutch director and screenwriter, the American actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, and the Mexican actor Diego Luna (Captain Cassian Andor of Star Wars ).

There is stiff competition between the hotly anticipated award contenders — Joaquim , directed by Marcelo Gomes, a Portuguese film about the decline of gold mining and gold smugglers in 18th-century Brazil; British director and screenwriter Sally Potter’s The Party, a dark comedythat exposes deep, perhaps irreparable political divisions between friends at a home party; and The Other Side of Hope . There is, of course, a post-World War drama, Bye Bye Germany , directed by Sam Garbarski, about a Jewish merchant trying to set up a linen business in the Frankfurt of 1946.

For stronger political statements, there is the documentary The Trial: The State of Russia vs Oleg Sentsov , which deals with Sentsov’s 20-year prison sentence for criticising the Russian government. And a documentary about two gay men in China — Bing Lang Xue .

With the glitz and glamour of Cannes still a few months away and the drama of Sundance over in January, the 67th Berlinale seems poised to fill the gap meaningfully.

Prathap Nairis a writer currently based in Berlin

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