The BelgradeInternational Film Festival, this year subtitled FEST Forward, was closed on March 5 by special guest Wim Wenders with a screening of his Don't Come Knocking.

A retrospective of Wenders'films was shown at the festival and he also opened an exhibition of hisphotographs entitled, Pictures from theSurface of the Earth.

The festival was judged to be one of the mostsuccessful in the past five years with around 100,000 spectators visiting the10-day festival and 75 films showing in six sections.

A wide range of filmswere shown from arthouse and festival favourites such as Michael Haneke'sHidden, Kim Ki-duk's3 Iron, Xavier Beauvois'Le Petit Lieutenant, Cristi Puiu's Death Of Mr. Lazarescu,Amat Escalante's Bloodand Lars von Trier's Manderlay, to indies including Jim Jarmusch's BrokenFlowers, Tommy Lee Jones' ThreeBurials Of Melquiades Estrada, Terry Gilliam's Tideland and Atom Egoyan'sWhere The Truth Lies to Oscar winnersBrokeback Mountain, Crash, Capote, Walk The Lineand The Constant Gardener.

As FEST is not a competitive event no awards aregiven, however critics and audiences do. The Serbian-Montenegrin section ofFIPRESCI awarded Wim Wenders'Don't Come Knocking and gave aspecial prize to Yugoslav Jovan Jovanovic's Young And Healthy As A Rose (Mlad i zdravkao ruza) from 1971,which was banned for political reasons after winning the main award at theformer Yugoslavia's National film festival in Pula. The audience gave thehighest marks to films from two sections: from section "Europe Out OfEurope", Ilya Khrzanovsky's4 and Walk The Line from the main section "Currents".

Adding gravitas to the event, the festival organizedthe "B2B" ("Belgrade To Business")- Europe out of Europemeeting, which included seminars on finding funding in the West and shooting inthe East, with representatives from Cannes, Berlin and Locarnofilm festivals, as well as sale agents from Bavaria Film International,Celluloid Dreams and Wide Management.

The focus for this event was on the pitching sessionwhich included ten Eastern European projects all vying for development support.Albanian Artan Minarolli's Alive and Serbian MilutinPetrovic's ComradeBunker won $12,000 (Euros10,000) each fordevelopment, funded by the festival.