The Berlin film festival looks east this year with six of 19 competition entries either made or based behind the old Iron Curtain, while two star-studded US movies tackle big business and pharmaceuticals.

Iran's record on human rights will be in the frame during the two-week cinema showcase starting on February 7, while the Flintstones make way for The Croods, a prehistoric family at the center of a new 3D animation from DreamWorks featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds.

The 63rd Berlinale will open with martial arts epic The Grandmaster by Chinese arthouse favorite Wong Kar Wai, who will also lead the jury handing out the Golden Bear top prize on February 16. After more than a decade of involvement with the film festival in Cannes, this will be the director's first prominent role in Berlin.

Nineteen productions including big-budget Hollywood movies, new work by European veterans and a wide selection of debut features will compete for top awards. Along with those shown in competition will be more than 400 other films at the 11-day event.

Star gazers can expect Matt Damon, Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Geoffrey Rush, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and Jeremy Irons on Berlin's red carpet.

While unable to attract the number of stars and blockbusters as similar events in Cannes and Toronto, Berlin is an early introduction each year to what global cinema has to offer and enjoys a reputation for tough films tackling hot-button issues.

"When you come into the New Year, it's important that there be a major international festival that lays the groundwork for the year," said Michael Barker, head of Sony Pictures Classics which is showing Before Midnight.

"I don't think it's a conflict with the Oscars or with Sundance, because Sundance is a very different type of festival," he told Reuters, referring to the festival held in Utah in January that has a greater emphasis on US cinema.

Eurocentric

Eastern Europe is in the Berlin spotlight, with competition films from the region including Child's Pose, which examines corruption and class in Romania through the story of a wealthy mother seeking to buy her convicted son his freedom.

Harmony Lessons is Kazakh filmmaker Emir Baigazin's feature drama debut, while In the Name of..., from Poland's Malgoska Szumowska, looks at the sensitive topic of homosexuality in the Roman Catholic priesthood through the life of a charismatic village priest.

US actor Shia LaBeouf plays Charlie in The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, about a young man who travels to Romania and gets embroiled in a dangerous rivalry with a mafia drug cartel. The film is the big-screen debut of Swedish-born commercial director Fredrik Bond and co-stars Evan Rachel Wood and Mads Mikkelsen.

Taking a swipe at big oil

Among the topical movies in Berlin in 2013 will be Promised Land, about the controversial drilling technique for extracting gas known as "fracking" which stars Matt Damon and is directed by his Good Will Hunting collaborator Gus Van Sant.

Steven Soderberg's Side Effects is in part a critique of the pharmaceutical industry, although online reviews stress it is as much a murder mystery and boasts Jude Law, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the cast.

Soderbergh, an Oscar winner for his 2000 narcotics drama Traffic, has announced it will be his final big-screen feature film for the foreseeable future. In an interview with the Huffington Post the prolific director said that he felt the need to "re-boot," explaining it in terms such as "I don't have gears, I have an on-off switch." His goal after some downtime is "to be vital" up to the end of his career, which, in his words, is very rarely accomplished by directors.

Arguably the most politically charged picture at the festival will be Closed Curtain, co-directed by acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi who made the film in defiance of a 20-year ban on film making imposed by authorities in his home country.

Convicted of making anti-government propaganda, Panahi has nevertheless managed to make two movies since being placed under house arrest in 2010.

In 2011 This Is Not a Film, about a day in his life, was transported out of Iran on a USB stick hidden inside a cake, and has since been shown to the world.

Before Midnight by Richard Linklater starring Hawke and Delpy is the final chapter of their slow-burning romantic trilogy. The film will be showing outside of competition and thus will not be eligible for any of the awards at the festival's closing ceremony.

Also in the main lineup but out of competition is Dark Blood, which River Phoenix was filming when he died at the age of 23 in 1993. Nearly 20 years later, after saving the footage from being destroyed, director George Sluizer decided to finish the film by reading aloud off-screen the missing scenes from the screenplay.

Reuters - AFP