Zrinka Cvitesic – turning heads at the Berlinale

As the Berlin Film Festival approaches its finale, opinions on which film should win the Golden Bear on Saturday are divided, with Alexei Popogrebsky’s How I Ended This Summer, Florin Serban’s If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle and Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer all in contention.

But according to The First Post’s sources, there is one subject on which most festival-goers are agreed – the most beautiful newcomer award, if there were such a thing, would go to the Croatian actress Zrinka Cvitesic.

Born in Karlovac, the 30-year-old isn’t actually a newcomer at all. She is well known in Croatia for her roles with the National Croatian Theatre, and won the best actress prize at the Pula Film Festival in Croatia for the 2005 film, What Is a Man Without a Moustache?.

That never made it to western multiplexes, and neither is her latest likely to - On The Path, made by the Bosnian director, Jasmila Zbanic, who won the Golden Bear in 2006 for her debut feature, Grbavica. The new film tells the story a love affair between Luna and Amar, two Muslim-born characters who grow apart when Amar joins a group of fundamentalist conservatives from the Wahhabi sect.

Never mind, Zrinka stunned the crowd at the Berlinale, showing up to the premiere of On the Path in a clingy peach-coloured gown (above). She will next appear in the romantic comedy Bella Biondina by Danijel Marusic, scheduled to premiere at the Pula festival this July. ·