( dpa )- Martin Scorsese's documentary on the Rolling Stones opens the Berlin Film Festival next week with the Oscar-winning director's take on one of the world's greatest pop groups setting the scene for a glittering celebration of music and film.
"It will somehow be a music Berlinale ," said Berlin Film Festival director Dieter Kosslick .
Mick Jagger & Co. in person, along with Scorsese, will join a long list of international stars on the red carpet at this year's festival.
This includes Madonna, Julia Roberts, Eric Bana , Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Daniel Day-Lewis and Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan.
Also expected in Berlin for the festival will be Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman, with women both as directors and performers also playing a prominent role at the Berlinale .
Now in its 58th year, the Berlinale has emerged as one of the world's top three film festivals with the stream of premieres, limousines and stars offering a touch of glamour to Berlin as the cold grey winter months grind on.
In awarding the Berlin festival's grand prizes of golden and silver bears jury president, the Greek-born director Constantin Costa- Gavras and his team will this year have to choose from a total of 26 movies that have been selected for the Berlinale's main competition.
This includes flicks from Iran, China, Europe, Japan, Brazil, Mexico and the United States.
Scorsese's documentary Shine a Light, based on two Stones' concerts in New York and including rare behind-the-scene footage, had bought "to the big screen the pure essence of a cult band," Berlin Film Festival director Dieter Kosslick said.
Kosslick has also pulled off another coup by securing the world premiere of pop star Madonna's directing debut, Filth and Wisdom, a comedy about the dreams of ordinary people who are seeking to find out a way of the drudgery of daily life.
Filth and Wisdom, which is not in the running for the festival's top awards is to be screened as part of the Berlinale's panorama section, which showcases independent and art-house cinema.
Also screening at this year's Berlinale is Steven Sebring's Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a homage to the American rock star, poet and painter Patti Smith. She is also planning to hold a concert in Berlin during the festival.
In addition, this year's festival's lineup includes Cafe de los Maetros , Argentinian director Miguel Kohan's film dedicated to some of the great figures of tango.
Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi chart the musical career of the Iraqi band Acrassicauda from the fall of Saddam Hussein to the present in their movie Heavy Metal in Baghdad.
Berlin this year will also mark US film directors' ongoing war with Washington over the conflict in Iraq with the world premiere of Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris' movie about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Morris' S.O.P. Standard Operating Procedure also seeks to shed light on the machinations behind the so-called war on terror and comes in the wake of a string of films on the Iraq war.
The release of Morris' new film follows his acclaimed documentary, The Fog of War, about former US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara. Set in part against the dark days of the Vietnam War, The Fog of War won an Academy Award for best documentary in 2004.
Moreover, a big contingent of movies from the US such as the international premiere of There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's acclaimed film on the early days of the oil prospecting business starring Daniel Day-Lewis are also to be shown in Berlin.
There Will Be Blood has already received eight nominations for next month's Academy Awards.
In addition the Berlinale has selected US director Lance Hammer's Ballast, a drama set in the Mississippi Delta, to join the race for the festival's grand prizes.
With the Berlinale having helped to spearhead the growing global interest in Asian cinema, films from Asian directors are also once again likely to play a major role in Berlin.
This includes China's director Wang Xiaoshuai who returns to Berlin this year with the world premiere of Zuo You (In Love We Trust) about the mother of a child who has cancer and resorts to unusual measures to save her firstborn. It stars Liu Weiwei , Zhang Jiayu and Yu Nan.
Wang Xiaoshuai won a Silver Bear at the 2001 Berlinale for Beijing Bicycle, his portrayal of life in the new China.
Carrying the flag at the Berlinale for Central European cinema will be veteran Polish director Andrzej Wajda's Katyn , which delves into one of the darkest moments in Poland's history - the massacre of thousands of Polish war prisoners by the Soviet secret service in 1940.
The Berlinale has also included in its program the world premiere of young Mexican film director Fernando Eimbcke's Lake Tahoe, about a 16-year-old boy who has to cope with his father's sudden death.