Not many first-time directors secure a prestigious slot at a leading international film festival simply by asking, fly in by private jet and then commandeer the presidential suite at one of the swankiest hotels in town.

Even if they did all the above would they also dare to compare themselves to Godard, Visconti, Pasolini and Fellini, the giants of European cinema?

Madonna just has.

Yesterday at the Berlin Film Festival, the singer, actress, mother and Kabbalist unveiled her directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom, to a smattering of polite critical applause and a paparazzi feeding frenzy.

The film is an everyday tale of a Ukrainian immigrant who finances his dreams of rock stardom by moonlighting as a cross-dressing dominatrix.

If anything it surprised critics by not being much, much worse.

As the reviewer in Berliner Zeitung put it: “Filth and Wisdom isn’t a bad film. That’s quite an achievement by Madonna’s standards.”

After a hit-laden career spanning three decades Madonna remains the world’s highest-earning female musician, earning £36 million in the year to June 2007.

But as an actress she has plumbed rare depths. She has a record haul of Golden Rasberry awards for Worst Actress, with 15 nominations and nine wins.

Her last celluloid outing was in 2002 in the universally derided Swept Away, which was directed by her husband Guy Ritchie and involved, according to The New York Times, “a lot of swearing, a little nudity, a modicum of sex and an eternity of staring at your watch”.

None of this appears to have dimmed her determination to make an impact in the film world.

Filth and Wisdom, an 81-minute “romantic musical dramedy”, is not in competition for prizes at the Berlin festival, and therefore has no chance of winning a Golden Bear. But Dieter Kosslick, the festival director, said that she had sent him a card saying: “Dear Dieter, if you like my film, I’d love it to be screened in Berlin.”

And in a statement issued before the premiere, she left little doubt about her ambitions: “I have always been inspired by the films of Godard, Visconti, Pasolini and Fellini and hope that I may one day make something that comes close to their genius.”

Regardless of how the film is received, Madonna’s very presence has provided the festival with a muchneeded highlight. She arrived at Tempelhof airport by private jet with an entourage of aides.

Dozens of reporters and camera crews are camped outside her hotel and on Wednesday night peered into the Entrecote restaurant at Checkpoint Charlie where she enjoyed a late dinner.

Fights broke out among some of the 500 journalists who tried to squeeze into a press screening on Wednesday. Only 350 managed to get into the hopelessly overcrowded cinema. Several film critics who failed to get in burst into tears in the street.

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