Above all, most of us still mark our diaries for those extra-special Hollywood films that were supposed to be off the agenda in the new dispensation. Former festdirektor Moritz de Hadeln was blamed for laying out too many red carpets for America. Yet this year we have a parade of Oscar-tipped US films and directors, from A Beautiful Mind and Monster's Ball to Uncle Sam Maverick himself, Robert Altman, Berlin-premiering Gosford Park.

The more it changes, the more Berlin stays the same. And why ever not? This festival has always "accepted diversity", even if new chief Dieter Kosslick believes the mandate has been made more urgent by September 11. Happily Berlin pays its own dues to history, its customary tithe of movies about the Nazi era this year including the eye-opening, not to say jaw-dropping documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary. For 90 minutes Traudl Junge discusses the guilt-tinged years (1942-45) she spent as an amanuensis to the great dictator. Breaking her silence from a Munich hospital, she draws a vivid, sometimes nightmarishly absurdist picture of the Fuhrer's life, from Berchtesgaden to the Berlin bunker, where Eva Braun wanted "to be a beautiful corpse" and Hitler test-poisoned his dog before dictating his own last testament.

Foreign movies invited to prod the German conscience included Bertrand Tavernier's Laissez- Passer (Safe Conduct), set in wartime occupied France, and David Riva's Marlene: Her Own Song, a docu-feature about Dietrich's war effort by her grandson. The ex- director of Life and Nothing But shines a light on the early 1940s French film industry, portraying real-life screenwriter Jean Aurenche (Denys Podalydes) and director-to-be Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) as they scurried about in the years of "Do we collaborate or not?" Scenes of studio intrigue and amorous musical beds go on a little long, Tavernier vitiating his story's impact with a three-hour running time. But there is a wonderful late sequence in which Brit-abducted resistance fighter Devaivre is whisked across the Channel to be debriefed, over tea and war gossip, by Blimpish espionage officers.

Marlene Dietrich was at the front, or near it, for so much of the second world war that she almost had to be scissored out of her uniform at war's end. "My boys" - as Dietrich called the Allied forces - revelled in this ex-Berliner's willingness to perform for them (apparently in all meanings of that verb). David Riva's film, shown noncompetitively, is a stirring scrapbook of the diva's proudest hours, when she sloughed the sequined sheaths and siren dialogue of Von Sternberg movies for army drag and an intransigent, admonitory reproach to her ex-countrymen: "You are fighting the wrong war for the wrong man."

Accept diversity. And attack intolerance. Also lurking on the Berlin fringe, half drama, half documentary, was Moises Kaufman's fascinating The Laramie Project. Bookended by Brechtian scenes in which they "explain" the film's form and purpose, a troupe of actors (including Peter Fonda, Steve Buscemi and Christina Ricci) make landfall in Wyoming to enact a script based on real interviews with Laramie-dwellers about the brutal 1998 killing of a gay student, beaten and crucified on a fence. The film-within-film structure might have been off-putting: instead it brings clarity and context to a harrowing story.

Back in competition, five movies are jostling for a lead in the Golden Bear race. The non-Hollywood front-runners are France's Eight Women, Germany's Grill Point and Japan's Spirited Away. The last - my favourite - is a spellbinding animation feature from Hayao Miyazaki, whose Princess Mononoke was the peak of late 20th century Japanese graphic cinema. Here again are the brilliance of storytelling - a girl sundered from her parents wanders into a ruined theme park (so-seeming) peopled by gods, monsters and mettle-testing marvels - and the images you could dream about forever. The giant stink god who galumphs into the ornately ancient bath-house as tall as the Tower of Babel; the bath-house itself, where Kafkaesque tiers of workers are ruled by a penthouse-dwelling harridan (very Mrs T); the train that rides through the sea; the faceless ghost who pads poignantly in our heroine's wake like a benign refugee from Scream. The digitally enhanced colour and camerawork are sensational. Distributors, buy now while rights are affordable.

From Germany came Andreas Dresen's Grill Point, a comedy of sex and midlife crisis that outscored Denmark's oddly similar (and comparably Mike Leigh-ish) Minor Mishaps. Dresen, who won followers with his 1998 Berlin hit Night Stories, excels at miserablist mirth. The new film is glum, very German and very funny as two friendly couples fall out when one husband, a naff local disc jockey (Frankfurt's answer to Alan Partridge), sleeps with the other husband's spouse. The social and psychological focus is laser-sharp, despite grungy video visuals. The semi-improvised performances are faultless.

Francois Ozon's Eight Women looks a million Euros: the best-dressed film in Berlin. After Sitcom and Under the Sand this director can afford the best movie image-making and the best movie icons. Imagine a country-house murder-mystery set in France, scripted for high-kitsch comedy and performed by a Qui est qui? of Gallic screen stardom. Deneuve, Huppert, Ardant, Beart and the immortal Danielle Darrieux (before your time, perhaps, but not mine) try to discover who shot the master of the house. All the women are connected, mostly by blood; all have motives for murder; and each takes time out to sing a song as Ozon goes from burlesque to tuneful balladry, on the principle that a mad movie shouldn't be mad by halves. Huge fun.

America, last but not least, has four films in the main event. A Beautiful Mind and The Shipping News are both nearing port in European cinemas: more soon. The other Hollywood hits have been Monster's Ball, dourly powerful in its early plot-building as it addresses racism, suicide and the anguish of a Death Row prison guard (Billy Bob Thornton), and The Royal Tenenbaums, an off-the-wall comedy from the writer-director of Rushmore, starring Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller and Anjelica Huston as warring members of a gilt-edged, incest-prone dynasty. Accept diversity. We at the 52nd Berlin Film festival think we can handle it.