A Berlinale 2006 top 10

(1) Seeing Jasmila Zbanic's Golden Bear–winner Grbavica with a teary-eyed audience at the International Theater, an old East German movie palace.

(2) The contentious Q&A after Lukas Moodysson's latest — a gentle reminder that you should never idolize filmmakers, just their work. Container is a torrent of bleak images of physical decay and sexual degradation accompanied by a childlike voice-over (by Jena Malone) that may or may not be the inner monologue of the transsexual character in the film. Moodysson didn't want to interpret the film for the audience, but he was fine with rejecting various audience readings or reactions.

(3) Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon, by South African director Khalo Matabane.

(4) A chat with the sweet and humble Michel Gondry and Good Bye Lenin! director Wolfgang Becker at a coffee shop near the festival.

(5) Expecting an enlightening discussion about the magic of radio at the press conference for The Prairie Home Companion and instead being subjected to journalists' questions about Lindsay Lohan's change of hair color.

(6) The reserved Park Chan-wook, director of Old Boy and Lady Vengeance, staging a one-man protest in front of the Berlinale Palast to oppose Korea's move to end the film quota system under the guise of free trade.

(7) Watching Matthew Barney and Björk slice themselves to pieces at the end of Drawing Restraint 9 and feeling as though I might have to stab myself in the leg if the film lasted a minute longer.

(8) Wide Awake, Alain Berliner's fascinating documentary about his battle with insomnia, programmed on the same day as Gondry's Science of Sleep.

(9) B-Zone: Becoming Europe and Beyond, an amazing project about globalization and the impact of war.

(10) Biggest misses: Nick Cave in a black velvet suit and handlebar mustache at the screening of The Proposition; Strange Circus, a film perhaps destined for midnight movie cult status. (Natalija Vekic)