The Berlinale'sKinderfilmfest has announced the first titles selected for its competition forthe Crystal Bear prize and for the 14plus section introduced at the festivallast February.

Already lined up for theKinderfilmfest competition are Torun Lian's tale of first love in The ColorOf Milk (Ikke Naken, Norway); LiisaHelminen's Pelicanman (Pelikaanimies,Finland) about a music-mad pelican transposed into the body of a friendly youngman; Gholamreza Ramezani's intimate story of a little girl longing forcompanionship in The Play (Bazi,Iran); and Mijke de Jong's Bluebird (Netherlands),a sensitive study of a girl mobbed and ostracised by her fellow pupils.

Meanwhile, the 14plus youthfilm competition already has the world premiere of Fourteen Sucks (FjortonSuger, Sweden) from thedirector-collective Dansk Skalle (who will also present the film as a part ofpublic discussion at the Talent Campus), Reza Bagher's Popular Music(Populamusik fran Vittula, Sweden)portraying the wild 1960s in northernmost Sweden, Shunjia Iwai's Hana & Alice (Japan) and Bahman Ghobadi's TurtlesCan Fly ( Iran/Iraq) which looks atthe life of Kurdish refugees caught between Saddam Hussein's reign ofterror and the latest American invasion.

Commenting on the selectionfor this year's line-up, section head Thomas Hailer noted that "today,more than ever, young moviegoers want to understand what is going on in theirworld and how people their age are dealing with it."

In addition, Hailer announcedthe members of the Kinderfilmfest's International Jury: festival directorsSayoko Kinoshita (Japan) and Gunvor Bjerre (Denmark), children's author andscreenwriter Dieter Bongartz (Germany), Belgian filmmaker Dominique Standaert,whose Hop was screened at theKinderfilmfest this year, and South Africa's Ntshavheni Wa Luruli whose film TheWooden Camera won the Crystal Bear inFebruary.