The Berlin film festival has announced that its 60th anniversary edition will run from February 11 to 21, 2010, thus avoiding a potential overlap with the Rotterdam film festival.

The Berlinale's choice of dates was restricted following Sundance's announcement of January 21-31 for its 2010 dates. That move prompted Rotterdam to shift its dates to January 27 - February 7 to avoid a complete overlap with the Stateside event.

However, there is still the potential for the Berlinale to clash with pre-Oscar events and the Oscar ceremony.

The Berlinale has apparently made its decision without an official announcement of the dates for the 2010 Academy Awards.

As previously reported in ScreenDaily, an Academy spokesperson stated that a decision on the date for 2010 would not be made until 'late March/early April'.

And today the Berlinale's administration manager Johannes Wachs told ScreenDaily that he 'does not have any information' about the 2010 dates for the Oscars.

Either the Berlinale has presented the Academy with a fait accompli or there have been discreet behind the scenes negotiations to avoid an overlap, pushing the 2010 Oscars to February 28.

A clash with the Oscars ceremony would be highly undesirable for any edition of the Berlinale, but particularly for its 60th anniversary year.

The festival would then be competing head-to-head with pre-Oscar events for the Oscar nominees and would have problems attracting A-list talent to travel to Berlin with their films.

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