Béla Balázs

Exposed to bad influences since childhood, Mary, a young girl is pushed by her mother to approach an elderly banker by the name of Harber. After almost driving her fiancee to suicide and seducing his mentally-ill son, she realizes through a metaphorical dream the scope of her negligence. Sentenced to prison for incitement to murder Harber, she sees herself as a parallel figure to Lea, Lot's wife in Sodom, where the Angel of the Lord warns the sinful citizens of the city of their impending doom. Lea oppresses the angel and eventually turns it over to the pagan priests when her sexual advances to it are rejected. In another dream sequence, Mary becomes the Queen of Syria, whose oppressed people turn against her and who, in turn, condemns a young man who loves her to death. Finally, her dream returns to the present time and when she awakens, she runs back to her former lover.

Countless people around the world know the pictures from Leni Riefenstahl's films, even if they have not seen them in their entirety. The work of the German director has burned itself into the collective memory. Even decades after the end of the Nazi era, she showed no remorse and presented herself as an apolitical, naive follower of the Nazi criminal regime. Her artistic service for the cinema was always recognized. But book author Nina Gladitz shows after decades of research that Hitler's favorite filmmaker was not only a follower, but also a perpetrator during the Third Reich, who instrumentalized other filmmakers such as the brilliant cinematographer Willy Zielke in order to gain fame for herself.

Guests at a posh Berlin hotel struggle through worry, scandal, and heartache.

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1944. A band of runaways and orphans of the war scour the countryside in search of food and shelter. They invade and then taken in by a musician and former concert pianist who’s hiding out in a ruined castle. After the initial altercation between them the gang accepts his guidance and he wins their respect by protecting them from the elements.

Valery Gergiev conducts Mariusz Trelinski’s thrilling new production of these rarely heard one-act operas. Anna Netrebko stars as the blind princess of the title in Tchaikovsky’s lyrical work, opposite Piotr Beczala as Vaudémont, the man who wins her love—and wakes her desire to be able to see. Nadja Michael and Mikhail Petrenko are Judith and Bluebeard in Bartók’s gripping psychological thriller about a woman discovering her new husband’s murderous past.

The staging of Béla Bartók's opera Bluebeard's Castle at Opera national de Paris, a collaboration of La Fura dels Baus and Jaume Plensa.

As sole female Junta is the only one who can climb a dangerous mountain, villagers deem her as a witch.

Playboy Paul Le Barroy, weds Elyane Parizot because he is ready for children, and his mistress, Louise Bonvin, is not. After the honeymoon, Elyane informs Paul that she doesn’t want children, either. When Paul leaves her, Elyane blames Louise and confronts the ex-mistress with a gun.

In London at the turn of the century, underworld kingpin Mack the Knife marries Polly Peachum without the knowledge of her father, the equally enterprising 'king of the beggars'.

The French-language version of the The Threepenny Opera with a different cast from the German version.

1934, Germany. The ten-year-old Peter lives in a small town with his parents. His father, an underground Communist, is arrested. In the summer vacation the kids from the neighbourhood fight in two teams, which prevail in turns. One team, led by Ewald, imitates the Nazis, while the other, headed by Fritz, follows his Communist father's example.

Paul and Peter share a garret flat. Paul is smitten with Anni, but her father forbids their match. Then Paul inherits a fortune—on one condition: he mustn’t marry “a girl.” Desperate, they scheme a sham marriage: Peter weds Anni so she’s no longer “a girl,” allowing Paul to claim his inheritance. Jealous at first, Paul watches as Peter and Anni wed, until, after their quick divorce, Paul finally wins Anni’s hand for real.

Anna receives her first weekly wage: a ten-mark note with the no. K 13513. She gives it to her mother, who hides it in her Bible. Anna's brother Robert steals the note and uses it to buy a knife with which he becomes a murderer.

A Spanish nobleman raises his only daughter as a boy, similarly to Greta Garbo in Queen Christina (1933). In adulthood, Juana's upbringing causes complications in her love life. Possibly an early example of genderqueer representation.

German adaptation of Béla Balázs's Grand Hotel, which was later remade by MGM in 1932.

In the distant mountains, in a Serbian village, the occupiers are robbing the population and shooting the rebels. The villagers flee into the forest and form a partisan detachment. The detachment mines the road so that the punitive detachment cannot reach the village. But the partisans do not have Bickford's belt. The bomber faces inevitable death. Young Marko undertakes this task.

Ellen Hobart is a gold-digging manicurist who sights her sights on David Stone, a wealthy young man. After they marry, Hobart is persuaded to accept $50,000 to give her husband up. She willingly goes along with this arrangement, only to realize she's genuinely in love with the boy when he falls dangerously ill. German-language version of the American pre-code film The Devil's Holiday.

Young Angélique has a crush on the famous writer René Vernon. One night she follows him, sleeps with him and becomes pregnant. Years later, she meets Vernon again, but he doesn't recognize her...

The great Georg Solti conducts a spectacular studio production of this masterpiece of 20th century opera. Two internationally celebrated Hungarian opera stars perform Bartók's darkly psychological parable with searing dramatic intensity.

Judith arrives at the castle of Bluebeard, his fourth wife. Despite her husband's reluctance, she insists on letting light into every room. One by one, Judith opens the doors and discovers behind each the dark secrets of the man she loves…

A Soviet cartoon with an original electronic musical score.

Running through Bartók’s disenchanted tale, whose haunting music was initially condemned as unplayable, and the expression of despair in Poulenc’s monologue, the director Krzysztof Warlikowski perceives a shared dramatic thread, a shared feminine consciousness and a shared sense of imprisonment and suffocation: for the woman who penetrates the confines of Bluebeard’s castle and Elle, the woman who clings to a telephone conversation with a man as the only thing worth living for, are condemned to share the same fate. And this man she speaks to, does he really exist? Unless the director has interpreted Cocteau’s words to the letter and the telephone has become a “terrifying weapon that leaves no trace, makes no noise”…

No synopsis available yet.