Enemy at the Gates Opens Berlin Film Festival

February 7 -- BERLIN — The 51st Berlin Film Festival opened today with the $80 million World War II drama Enemy at the Gates. For the world premiere, English actors Jude Law, Bob Hoskins, and Rachel Weisz — who star as Russians in the siege of Stalingrad in the film — were on hand alongside director Jean-Jacques Annaud, who is French.

With an epic scale befitting one of WW II's most important battles, Enemy stars Law as real-life peasant-turned-sniper Vassili, who became a national hero in a matter of days. For the role of a ruthless Nazi sniper sent in from Berlin to settle Vassili's hash, Annaud chose Ed Harris, because the actor's ice-blue eyes were "like a bird of prey."

Annaud conceded that he cast the Oscar-nominated Law partly for his looks. "Vassili was very handsome, and beauty sells. That's why he became a hero in nine days. In the midst of this duel, he was also conducting a love affair — and this is why I went to one of the sexiest young men of today."

Weisz, as in Miami Vice?

Actress Weisz, who plays the woman caught in a love triangle with Law and Joseph Fiennes, chose not to discuss her big American sequel, The Mummy Returns. But she did correct a German reporter who mispronounced her last name with an initial W instead of a V.

"It's 'vice,'" she emphasized. "As in Miami Vice?" he asked. "It just means white," she said with a shrug, adding, "I don't mind when English people don't get it" — but she clearly expected the reporter to use the same pronunciation on her name as he would when speaking German.

Will Americans Embrace a Soviet Hero?Unlike Saving Private Ryan and the upcoming Pearl Harbor, Annaud's film, which arrives stateside March 16, has the distinction of being a WWII movie without one American GI, just Russians and Nazis. "Until the Cold War ended, Hollywood would never have committed money to a movie about a Soviet hero," Weisz noted. "It would have been impossible until the last 10 years."

For his part, Annaud isn't worried about how the American audience may react. "I am probably a curiosity, but when I get enthusiastic about a project and get passionate, I don't think about audiences and how they'll react in Beijing, in Berlin, in Los Angeles," he said. "I just felt it was a compelling story, one I'd never heard before. If I'm interested in something, other people will be."