The Coen brothers’ much-anticipated new film Hail, Caesar! has been announced as the opening film of the Berlin film festival.
Starring George Clooney, Josh Brolin and Scarlett Johansson, Hail, Caesar! is set in 1950s Hollywood and follows Brolin’s film producer’s attempts to track down and recover Clooney’s screen star after the latter is kidnapped during the making of a Roman epic. It has been described by the film-makers as the third in their “numbskull trilogy” with Clooney, following O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty.
The Coens have been honoured with a Berlin opening spot before, when True Grit debuted there in 2011. Despite its early place in the film calendar, Berlin has often been a springboard to awards success, most recently for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which went on to win four Oscars more than a year after its Berlin debut in 2013.
Hail, Caesar! will screen at the festival on 11 February
The Berlin film festival runs from 11 to 21 February.
