The 2001 edition of the Berlin Film Festival will honour director Fritz Lang with a retrospective, screening the complete filmography of the German director, who died in Los Angeles in 1976. Many of the prints that will screen have been restored from original negatives.

The highlight of the series, which was organised by the Berlin Film Museum, will be a screening of Lang's classic Metropolis, with a new score composed by Bernd Schultheis and performed by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, with Frank Strobel conducting. "With this retrospective our festival is emphasising a superb achievement in film history," outgoing festival director Moritz de Hadeln said, pointing out that Lang's success story started in Berlin.

German partners for the retrospective are the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation, the German Film Archive, the Munich Film Museum, the German Film Institute and KirchMedia. International partners include the Academy Film Archive, 20th Century Fox, Sony and Warner Bros.

Fritz Lang, who left Nazi Germany for the US in 1933, directed 46 films between 1919 and 1960, among them classics such as M, Fury, The Big Heat, Scarlet Street and The Woman In The Window. The Berlinale will take place from February 8-18.