Coen brothers' 'Hail, Caesar!' to open Berlin film fest

BERLIN (Reuters) - "Hail, Caesar!", an all-star look at the Hollywood Golden Age by the Academy Award-winning director duo Joel and Ethan Coen, will be the opening film of the 66th Berlin International Film Festival on Feb. 11, the festival announced on Friday. George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Josh Brolin and Ralph Fiennes feature in the cast of the movie which will focus on the latter years of the period when the Hollywood studios reigned supreme, from roughly the 1920s to the 1960s. “It’s wonderful that Joel and Ethan Coen are once again opening the Berlinale. Their humour, unique characters and fantastic narrative skill are guaranteed to thrill the audience. 'Hail, Caesar!' is the perfect start for the 2016 Berlinale,” Festival Director Dieter Kosslick said in a statement. The film, which also stars Alden Ehrenreich, Jonah Hill, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Channing Tatum, is set in the 1950s and "follows a single day in the life of a studio fixer who is presented with plenty of problems to fix", the statement said. The Coen brothers have been leading figures of international cinema for more than 30 years, since their debut film "Blood Simple" in 1984. They have won Academy Awards for several of their films, including "Fargo" and "No Country for Old Men", and also have appeared regularly at the Berlin film festival, notably with "The Big Lebowski" in 1998. Their western "True Grit" was the festival opener in 2011. (Reporting by Michael Roddy; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)