'Salmon' to start Palm Springs

The 23rd annual Palm Springs Film Festival will open on Jan. 5 getting a gala screening of "Seafood Fishing inside the Yemen," the fest introduced Thursday. Director Lasse Hallstrom's "Seafood Fishing," which CBS Films acquired within the Toronto Film Festival in September, is one kind of greater than 60 premieres within the PSIFF this year. The festival includes 187 films from 73 nations. "It's a wide different choice of highly accomplished and sometimes provocative new films, combined by getting an extended archival section," mentioned festival director Darryl Macdonald. The closing-evening gala on Jan. 15 will showcase the comedy "Almanya, Thank you for going to Germany." "The German arthouse hit of year, Yasemin Samdereli's 'Almanya, Thank you for going to Germany,' marks the look of the exciting new voice,"artistic director Helen du Toit mentioned. "Really, the festival is positively filled with the task of emerging filmmakers this year -- more than another in the films are first features, representing the programming team's persistence for featuring new talent." Two films will probably be making their world premieres within the festival: "Personally," which stars Marcia Gay Harden and Aidan Quinn and "A Thousand Cuts," starring Michael O'Keefe. The festival will actually have a special presentation of Steven Soderbergh's "Haywire," which follows a really trained operative who's utilized by a government contractor which is double-joined. The film stars Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor. The present masters section, designed to highlight auteurs of latest cinema, will showcase two films that are Golden Globe nominated: "We must Discuss Kevin," whose star Tilda Swinton received a nom and "The Child While using Bike," a foreign-language film nominee. Others inside the section include Denmark's "Animal," Japan's "Chronicle of My Mother" and Russia's "Elena." Contact Christy Grosz at christy.grosz@variety.com