Wieland Speck, director of the Panorama sidebar at the Berlin Film Festival:
"To show a film from Iran about a transsexual, as we did three years ago, was a sensation. We had to take enormous precautionary measures, because this continues to be a highly political issue.
"But it's by no means just the Islamic countries. In our neighbouring Poland a man was recently elected president [Lech Kaczynski of the far right "Law and Justice" party] who has been spreading so much hatred towards gays and lesbians, that a lot of people have been hurt, also physically. At the moment in Poland, gays and lesbians are being attacked by neo-Nazis and the police are doing nothing about it. This shows that we are nowhere even close to where we think we are, when we see a mixed crowd enjoying itself in the bars and on the dance floors here. The basic political situation hasn't changed. The patriarchy is still the ruling power on this planet and in each and every country; and the patriarchy feels extremely threatened by men who don't go along with it."
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Berlin's Teddy Award, given to films with gay/lesbian themes or characters, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. To mark the occasion, previous Teddy Award winners will be screened in the Panorama sidebar.
Among those are Pedro Almodóvar's Law of Desire, Derek Jarman's The Last of England, Todd Haynes' Poison, François Ozon's Water Drops on Burning Rocks, and Anahí Berneri's A Year Without Love.