Meryl Streep

Movies starring Colin Firth, Kirsten Dunst and Emma Thompson will vie for gold at the 66th Berlin film festival starting Thursday, with Meryl Streep as jury president and a spotlight on Europe’s refugee crisis.

The 11-day event, Europe’s first major cinema showcase of the year, will start with a gala screening of “Hail, Caesar!” with US directors Joel and Ethan Coen and stars George Clooney, Channing Tatum and Tilda Swinton expected on the red carpet in the wintry German capital. The competition will kick off the following day, with 18 films from around the world gunning for the Golden Bear top prize, which Streep’s seven-member panel will award on February 20. Last year, top honors went to Iranian dissident director Jafar Pahahi, whose innovative “Taxi” had to be filmed in secret in a Tehran cab.

Among the most-anticipated pictures this year is “Genius,” the feature debut by British theater director Michael Grandage starring Oscar winner Firth as literary editor Max Perkins, who published some of the 20th century’s greatest American writers.

Jude Law plays writer Thomas Wolfe, Nicole Kidman his lover and muse Aline Bernstein, with Dominic West portraying Ernest Hemingway and Guy Pearce as F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Also generating buzz ahead of the festival is a new adaptation of the international bestseller “Alone in Berlin,” Hans Fallada’s 1947 novel which is based on a true story.

The Nazi-era thriller sees Thompson and Irish actor Brendan Gleeson play a working-class German couple who mount a daring resistance campaign after losing their only son in the war.

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