Last year's Golden Bear winner Jasmila Zbanic, directors Walter Salles and John Waters, producer Kees Kasander, and actors Sarah Polley and Gael Garcia Bernal are among 120 international experts speaking at the Berlinale Talent Campus which celebrates its fifth anniversary between Feb 10-15.

The programme of discussions, lectures, and workshops will also feature human rights activist Bianca Jagger, Finding Neverland composer Jan Kaczmarek, veteran documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman (whose latest film State Legislature has its world premiere in the Forum), and German production designer Uli Hanisch, who received a Bavarian Film Award last month for his work on Tom Tykwer's Perfume - The Story of a Murderer.

A record 3,678 emerging talents from 129 countries applied to participate in the winter academy under the motto of 'Home Affairs - Privacy, Films and Politics', an increase on 2006's 3,516 applications from 121 countries. This year, participants were selected for the first time from Nepal, Ruanda, Gabon, Kirghizia, Morocco and the Dominican Republic, but the overall number of participants invited to Berlin has been reduced from previous years from 500 to 350.

'The fact we have 150 fewer people is partly due to the change of venue [the Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Theatre],' the Talent Campus' new programme manager Dorothee Wenner told ScreenDaily.com. 'And, in year five, we also had to ask ourselves whether size and figures were what the Campus is about or not.'

An innovation at this year's Campus will be the introduction of the Garage Studio as part of the Working Campus where teams of international teams will produce a digital short to be presented exclusively as podcasts on the Campus' website.

The Talent Campus will be launched on Feb 10 with the presentation of this year's Berlin Today Award in the presence of festival director Dieter Kosslick, filmmakers Walter Salles, Jasmila Zbanic, Jia Zhangke, composer Jan Kaczmarek and Berlin Today Award mentor Sebastian Schipper.

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