Sunday, February 10-------For the 11th consecutive year, the Berlin Film Festival is hosting the Shooting Stars initiative, a promotion effort to kickstart the careers of some of Europe's most promising actors and actresses. The program is sponsored by European Film Promotion, a pan-European organization of the continent's film promotion offices, who work together to spread the gospel about European film and film talents at film festivals and markets around the world.

This year's talent pool (pictured above from left to right) includes: Stine Fischer Christensen (Denmark) Joel Basman (Switzerland); Anamaria Marinca (Romania); Marko Igonda (Slovakia), Zsolt Nagy (Hungary), Nicolas Cazalé (France), Maryam Hassouni (The Netherlands) ; Hannah Herzsprung (Germany);  and Elio Germano (Italy).

In Berlin, the young actors and actresses have a dizzying array of photo shoots and official presentations in store. Yesterday, the group was photographed at an atmospheric Volkswagen factory, with the r&b artist Seal. Today, they were the focus of a casting agents' pitching session where the beautiful young things could network and find out about upcoming productions. The group also is participating in the Berlinale Talent Campus, meeting producers, distributors, financiers and others who can help with their career ambitions.

Monday is the big day and night......kicking off with a Press Conference, where members of the international press can have one-on-one access to the budding talents, and culminating with the official presentation of the Shooting Stars at a gala screening at the Berlinale Palast. All this is followed, natch, by the legendary Shooting Stars Party, one of the Berlinale's most celebrated soirees.

As an added feature this year, EFP is promoting films being presented in both the official sections of the Festival and the accompanying Film Market that showcase the talents of this up-and-coming stars. Past alumni of the Shooting Stars initiative who have become major film actors include Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Daniel Bruehl. It will be interesting to see which of this year's crop will be on the acendancy in the months and years to come.

Sandy Mandelberger, Berlin FF Dailies Editor