The 27th International Istanbul Film Festival (April 5-20) will open with Nadine Labaki's Cannes hit Caramel.

The festival, sponsored by AKBANK, has programmed 200 films in 20 sections, playing at six venues.

Twelve international films are competing for the Golden Tulip: Ben X, Darling, The Wave, Be Kind Rewind, Egg, My Marlon And Brando, Jar City, Hope, Gone With The Woman, XXY, Honeydripper, and Erik Nietzsche The Early Years.

The Golden Tulip jury is comprised of Michael Ballhaus, Kirsi Tykkylainen, Joan Dupont, Selim Eyupoglu, Bent Hamer and Pawel Pawlikowski.

The Turkish Cinema programmes, sponsored by Efes Pilsen, include 30 projects of fiction features and documentaries. In the National Competition are Uygar Asan's Shell, Mehmet Guleryuz's Havar, Mehmet Gureli's Shadow, Kazim Oz's Storm, Dervis Zaim's Nokta, Seyfi Teoman's Summer Book and Hüseyin Karabey's My Marlon and Brando.

The National Competition jury is Semih Kaplanoglu, Sylvain Auzou, Michele Maheux, Nurgul Yesilcay, and Elif Safak.

The Cinema Honorary Awards, presented during the opening ceremony, will go to actors Ekrem Bora, Izzet Gunay, and Ediz Hun.

The 2007 event saw more than 170,000 audience attendees.

For the full programme, visit http://www.iksv.org/film/english.

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