While most of Berlin was focused for two weeks on the Berlinale, the big annual film festival, a smaller, edgier competition was stealing headlines.

Six kilometers from the Berlinale's red carpet at the Sony Center on the Tiergarten, the alternative Boddinale film festival was entering its third year. The rival event's credo: Give independent film directors a prominent stage.

The setting could not be more different than the glitzy Berlinale, which is held at Berlin's sleek Potsdamer Platz near the Tiergarten central park.

In the cellar of a dilapidated building that used to be a bordello on Boddinstrasse in the hip Neukölln district, viewers in dark streetwear sat on old Persian carpets and discarded car seats, sipping Berliner Pilsner beer, whose television commercial gave Berlin its unofficial song anthem.

Smoking was not banned, but encouraged, and most of those at the Boddinale twisted roll-your-own cigarettes along with the directors.

This year, 87 directors showed films on six screens at the former bordello, which had to expand to a gallery across the street to accomodate the large crowds, the biggest in the three-year history of the underground festival.

One of the festival's founders, Gianluca Baccanico, a self-described "neo-Kantian philosopher of the Internet," said the event attracted more than 3,000 people this year, almost double the number of the year before.

"The festival lives off its communal feel," Mr. Baccanico told Handelsblatt Global Edition. "Directors, all of whom are Berlin-based, explain their films after each screening. It is this that attracts the crowds. The feeling that this could be your neighbor."

Even though some German media have cast the Boddinale as an "anti-movement" to the Berlinale, the founders reject the comparison.

"It is not a counter movement. We just wanted to give independent directors visibility. When we started, we had no idea that we would be compared to the Berlinale," Mr. Baccanico said.

The festival is held at the same time as the Berlinale. Unlike its larger, world-famous cousin with the upscale address in Berlin-Mitte, the Boddinale this year had a budget of only €900 (US$ 1000).

The budget for the Berlinale this year was €22 million.

Mr. Baccanico defended the quality of films showed at the smaller festival, saying "only 10 percent of what we showed this year is amateurish and very experimental."

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