French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, who has worked on Belle Du Jour, The Tin Drum, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, will receive the Copenhagen International Film Festival's Life Achievement Award in September.

'Screenwriters always end up in the shadow of the director, but we would like to do our bit to redress that imbalance,' programme director Jacob Neiiendam said of the festival's fifth edition (Sept 20-30).

Carrière will also hold the first of three master classes on scriptwriting, followed by Jim Sheridan and David Hare. Then a panel of local writers - among others Kim Leona and Rasmus Heisterberg - will discuss how to find a good story and how to tell it.

The CIFF, which has scheduled 147 films for the 10-day programme, will be bookended by Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which won the best director prize in Cannes, and Kenneth Branagh's updated version of Sleuth. Both Schnabel and Branagh will attend the gala screenings..

This year there are no Danish contenders for the six Golden Swan prizes, but among the 11 entries are Danish-Swedish director Ake Sandgren's first film in Swedish since 1995, To Love Someone, Norwegian director Marius Holst's Mirush and Icelandic director Ragnar Bragason's Children.

Focusing on European cinema, the competition includes Stefan Ruzowitsky's The Counterfeiters, David Mackenzie's Hallam Foe, Sam Gabarski's Marianne Faithfull starrer, Irina Palm, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi's Actresses and Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit.

Besides Kolirin's feature debut the CIFF will unspool Made in Israel, a sidebar dedicated to Israeli cinema with such films as David Volach's My Father, My Lord, Etgar Keret-Shira Geffen's Jellyfish, and Eytan Fox's The Bubble. The festival will also host an Israeli Day.

In another move the CIFF has appointed Fusun Eriksen, of Denmark 's Trust Film Sales, as the new head of Buster-Copenhagen International Film Festival for Children and Young Audiences, which is now under the CIFF umbrella.

After business studies, Eriksen worked in advertising, until she became in charge of marketing at Trust, the international sales arm of Zentropa Entertainments. After the festival merger, Buster will next run in March 2008.

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