The 60th Berlin Film Festival is set to kick off Thursday with a special opening spotlight on Chinese cinema.

Chinese director Wang Quan'an will lead the opening ceremony with a special screening of his new film Apart Together.

Still of Apart Together [mtime.com]

Apart Together is a story about "a reunion of a family that separated years ago," festival director Dieter Kosslick told Xinhua. Because 2010 is the 20th anniversary of Germany's reunification, he said, the film is "very symbolic to us, and we really like it."

Wang won the highest accolade at the Berlin Film Festival, the Golden Bear, in 2007 with his movie Tuya's Marriage.

This year a total of 400 films will be presented throughout the festival. Two of the 10 Chinese language films in the festival will vie for the anniversary Golden Bear on February 21, the last day of the festival.

This year's big Jubilee festivities will be hosted by Kosslick and German director Werner Herzog, the jury festival president.

Poster of "Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop" [mtime.com]

Another well-known Chinese director, Zhang Yimou, will compete again in the festival with his new film Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop.

Zhang won the first Golden Bear in 1988 for Chinese filmmakers with his directoral debut, Red Sorghum. The classic film will be screened during the festival's retrospective series Play It Again.

The Ghost Writer, a new political thriller from controversial Oscar winning director Roman Polanski, will also premiere at the festival.

The Ghost Writer, based on the novel by Robert Harris, tells the story of a ghostwriter who discovered a number of political secrets while writing the personal memoirs of a former British prime minister.

The film was expected to grab public interest not only due to its story, but also because Polanski is currently under house arrest in Switzerland, where he awaits possible extradition to the US, which he fled in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio team up again to tell the tale of Shutter Island about a US marshal, played by DiCaprio, who is sent to an isolated island to re-capture a criminally insane murderess only to question his own sanity.

The Berlin Film festival, started in 1951, will also take a look back at the filmmaking history of the past six decades.

A premiere screening of the restored orginal version of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent sci-fi classic, Metropolis, will be held February 12 as a salute to great masters.