Thisyear's Munich Film Festival will be dedicating its retrospective to the Makhmalbaf family and a tribute to UK filmmaker Mike Figgis, while the 2006 CineMeritAward for his services to cinema will be presented to veteran US director BarryLevinson.

Accordingto the festival organisers, this will be the first time that the films of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, his wife Marziyeh Meshkini, and children Samira, Hana and Maysam have been shown together at one event. All of thefamily are expected to come to Munich to accompany theretrospective.

Thechoice of Levinson as this year's recipient of the CineMeritAward follows such past winners as Sir Alan Parker, MilosForman, Susan Sarandon, Jacqueline Bisset,producer Marin Karmitz, Barbara Hershey and GeraldineChaplin.

Inaddition to the regular programme, which includes sections dedicated to newGerman feature and TV films, American independents, French cinema, andchildren's films, the 2006 edition will feature special sidebars focusing onfilms from Central Europe (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro) and on filmmaking fromthe region of Quebec.

Dueto the World Cup being staged in Germany this year, the MunichFilm Festival will be held three weeks later than usual - from July 15 - 22 -and a week after the Karlovy Vary International FilmFestival ends.