Actress Lily James poses during a photocall for the movie Cinderella.

By Andrew McCathie, DPA/Berlin

Australian actress Cate Blanchett shines as the evil stepmother walking her cat Lucifer on a leash through Kenneth Branagh’s update on the Cinderella fairytale, which screened at the Berlin Film Festival yesterday.
“Are you playing Cinderella?” Blanchett said people asked hesitantly when she said she was playing in the new Cinderella film.
“I think we should save that for the Sydney drag shows,” she told a press conference in Berlin.
“I was too told for Cinderella and not funny enough for the fairy godmother so I got what was left over,” joked Blanchett about her role in Branagh’s adaption of the Brothers Grimm fairytale.
In the end, the role of fairy godmother went to Helen Bonham-Carter.
Best known for his interpretations of Shakespeare, Branagh’s film – complete with lush costumes and spectacular sets – comes 65 years after the original legendary animated Disney movie was screened at the first Berlinale in 1951.
“The Cinderella story continues to capture our imagination,” Branagh said, adding: “The Cinderella myth is flexible and adaptable to the time in which it is presentable.”
Lily James from the TV series Downton Abbey played Cinderella in the film, which was screened out of competition at the festival.
This ruled it out of being in the running for any top prizes.
Richard Madden of Game of Thrones fame played her prince charming.
The Cinderella screening followed the premiere earlier in the day at the festival of Vietnamese director Phan Dang Di’s Cha Va Con Va (Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories).
Set in Saigon in the mid-1990s, Phan’s film is about a group of friends trying to find their place in a Vietnam still struggling with the aftermath of 20 years of war.
Cha Va Con Va takes the audience on a journey through the grey underworld of communist Vietnam where the young would-be photographer Vu and his friends spend a large part of their time.
But trouble with the law and a bunch of urban thugs force the friends to flee to the Mekong Delta, where they reconnect through the swampy landscape and impenetrable jungles to life outside the city.
“This was a time when Vietnam and the world were moving into a new century,” Phan told the press conference.
Phan’s film was one of 19 movies vying for the Berlinale’s top award, the Golden Bear for best picture.