Thessaloniki, Greece - The Greek northern port city of Thessaloniki comes under the cinema world spotlight Friday as the International Film Festival gets underway for 10 days of movie screenings.

More than 240 films from around the globe will be revealed as part of the 50th edition of the annual movie festival, known for being the largest in the Balkans.

The festival gets underway on November 13 with a screening of Fatih Akin's award-winning Soul Kitchen - a comedy featuring Adam Bousdoukos in the role of a Greek restaurant owner in Hamburg. It will close with Alain Resnais's "Wild Grass."

TIFF will also include an international programme such as Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother and Clauida Llosa's Milk of Sorrow, both screening out of competition as well as Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani's Ajami and Samantha Morton's The Unloved.

The competition section comprises of 15 films from Hungary, the United States, Germany, Argentina, Romania, Korea, the Philippines, Mexico, Egypt, Belgium, Brtain and Colombia.

German director Werner Herzog is the guest of honour at this year's festival and will be present for a retrospective on his work, with dozens of film screenings from 1968's Signs of Life to 1999's Lord and the Laden.

The Independence Day category, the big international section of cutting-edge films, will include a tribute to Pink Eiga, the underground Japanese erotica movement in the 1960s and a selection of films by young independent American filmmakers. (dpa)