Stefan Zweig

1938. While the Nazi troops march into Vienna, the lawyer Josef Bartok hastily tries to escape to the USA with his wife but is arrested by the Gestapo. Bartok remains steadfast and refuses to cooperate with the Gestapo that requires confidential information from him. Thrown into solitary confinement, Bartok is psychologically tormented for months and begins to weaken. However, when he steals an old book about chess it sets him on course to overcome the mental suffering inflicted upon him, until it becomes a dangerous obsession.

The 1920s, Germany, times of hyperinflation. A young antique dealer realizes that his father’s shop is on the verge of going bankrupt. While going through the journal records, he finds notes about an old client, who owns a priceless collection. He decides to go to the province, hoping to buy it for dirt-cheap.

Paris, 1942. In the middle of the Occupation, Victor Gence, an unscrupulous merchant, buys, at vastly low prices, artworks belonging to Jewish collectors. Informed by a concierge, he manages to enter the apartment of Mr. Klein who apparently has a fabulous collection.

The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting, the battle for an enormous family fortune and the slow and then sudden upheavals that transformed Europe during the first half of the 20th century.

The young Beto ventures to the Brazilian countryside in search of a collection of rare drawings. There he meets Samir, the collector, and his family ruined by the demise of the cocoa plantations. The journey and the encounter will irrevocably change the young man’s soul.

A romantic drama set in Germany just before WWI and centered on a married woman who falls in love with her husband's teacher. Separated by the war, they pledge their devotion to one another.

The life and death of the Scottish monarch.

A story about art and educated men, and how their art and culture reveal themselves useless in the face of the harsh realities of the 20th century life.

All hell breaks loose when an eccentric theatrical ensemble arrives in Oviedo, Spain to stage a production of the Leopoldo Alas play -La Regenta.

Peking, 1948. A winter night. A man returns home to find a letter awaiting him written by a woman before her death. in the letter she tells him the story of her love for him -a life-long passion that has not diminished over time, but one that he has never known. her story spans 18 years from the moment she -then a 13 year-old girl- sets her eyes on her new neighbor. she tells their brief but passionate love in her youthi the hardship she goes through raising their child alone, and their final encounter after the war, during which the man fails tor ecognize her and one which leaves her in despair. Now having lost her son, she no longer has the courage to live on. Only in a letter is she capable of telling him everything, for the first and the last time. shaken by the letter, the man searches his memory for the nameless woman.

Set in 1913, 1936 and 2001. When he returns to the casino and seaside resort of his early teens, Louis, a 78 year old man encounters Olivia, a 19 year old young woman madly in love with a violent cad. Louis tells the story of his own mother having a passionate, driven fling with his Italian tennis instructor in 1936, and of Marie Collins Brown, the slightly older widowed woman who helped him through his confusion and pain by recounting the story of her passionate 24 hour fling with a hopeless young Polish gambler in 1913.

Vienna, in the 1930s. The attractive and famous writer Albert Rank receives the letter from a stranger. He discovers that she devoted her entire life to her boundless love. In her letter, Rose looks back on a variety of meetings with Albert: Since childhood, she is slavishly in love with him and she never got away from her throughout her life. In many encounters Rank could not recognize them, even if the shared moments had been wonderful. As an adult woman, Rose's love is too painful to go on, and she has dire consequences.

Vienna before the First World War: Clarissa Schuhmeister grows up in the monastery. Strict discipline determines her life until she meets the Frenchman Léonard and falls in love with him. Just when she expects a child from him, the First World War tears the happy couple apart. Out of pragmatism, Clarissa marries Gottfried, a deserter, with whom she makes a painful yet realistic agreement so that he will not be sent back to war. But she never feels love for him because she can not forget Léonard.

The story of Marquise De Prie, the wife of Marquis De Savoy and the mistress of King Louis XV.

Edgar M. and his mother come abroad a small ship to Eden Sanatorium spa. It is here that the wife, wronged by her husband, will seek a cure for her bad headache, while the 13-year-old Edgar M. is fighting his first male impulses as well as 'enoresis nocturna', the prettier word for wetting one's bed. The boy's amazed gaze hungrily devours the diverse hotel guests, their love joys and sorrows, while passion lustfully penetrates the walls, carried by the voice of the enchanting opera singer.

Whenever people are released from their society's constraints, there is the possibility that they will behave badly, at least according to the rules of the society they have left behind. This seems to have been particularly the case for Europeans living in colonial establishments in Africa and Asia. In this drama, based on a story by Stefan Zweig, Dr. Steiner (Andrzej Seweryn) was caught with his fingers in the till at a German hospital. Rather than prosecute him, they gave him the option of emigrating elsewhere. He chose to serve at a clinic in a remote part of Portuguese Goa. He has been on his best behavior for years, but when the beautiful wife (Fanny Ardant) of a diplomat comes to him asking for an abortion, he is tempted to ask for sexual favors in return, and his life swiftly goes out of control.

While recuperating in a sanatorium in the mountains, a young boy becomes very close friends with an older baron. But the baron is only using the boy to get to know his mother, the wife of an older diplomat. When the boy realises the baron’s intentions, he becomes jealous, moody and depressed.

It is the story of a middle age professor who falls deaply in love with a young student in his English literature class. The student is a boarder in the teacher's house. The teacher is married and his wife knows he is mostly attracted to young men. She loves him nevertheless. The whole story revolves around a book the professor will write, dictating to his young pupil... he will only declare his love at the end of the writing ...and, it is too late.

Set in a garrison town in Austria before 1914, is the story of the unfortunate love between simple lieutenant Anton Hofmiller and Edith, the paralyzed daughter of the count, who is the richest man in the region.

Mona loves her Husband Ahmed and Kid Khaled, but Husband is always away on business trips around the world, which leaves the wife and kid in constant waiting status.on a vacation to tunis,an affair start taking form,and that made her torn between her family and longing for love feelings.

Alice, a widowed Frenchwoman, goes on a vacation to Italy. Upon her return, she relates the particulars of her holiday. Within a 24-hour time frame, Alice gets on the wrong boat, winds up in Switzerland where she whiles away the hours at a casino, meets a handsome young German army deserter named Thomas, spends the night with her new acquaintance, pays his sizeable gambling debts, and helps him elude the authorities...

Byzance uses a text by Stefan Zweig to describe the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453. Before he turned to feature filmmaking in 1968 with Naked Childhood, Pialat worked on a series of short films, many of them financed by French television. Byzance is one of Pialat’s six Turkish shorts.

Helen Lester is in love with a man she has known just 24 hours, a playboy who spent time in jail for passing bad checks. Though the man has promised to change, most of her strait-laced relatives are up in arms. But Clare Lester, Helen's grandmother, says the girl is free to join the man she loves. On one condition, that she listen to the story of a day in Clare's own life and of a man she tried to change.

Werner von Basil (a Austrian intellectual) was captured by the Nazi in 1938. The want to break him to confess smuggling. Without any mental sustenance, the only thing left to keep his mind busy is an old tactics book for chess.

Young army officer gets involved with two sisters; one of them's a chronic invalid and her family has protected and sheltered her from all possible harm with such smothering care that she's a spoiled, petulant bag of temper tantrums. She forms a big ol' crush on the dashing lieutenant, and everyone involved goes completely nuts and makes an infinite number of bad decisions in the wake of her pouting and her crying jags and her passive-aggressive crap.

Man and woman have a couple of one-night-stands spread out over 15 or 20 years.

Irene Wagner, the wife of the prominent German scientist Professor Albert Wagner, had been having an affair with Erich Baumann. She does not disclose this to her husband, hoping to preserve his innocence and their "perfect marriage". This fills her with anxiety and guilt. However, Johann Schultze, Erich's jealous ex-girlfriend, learns about the affair and begins to blackmail Irene, turning Irene's psychological torture into a harsh reality.

A compulsive gambler stumbles towards losing everything when Merle Oberon decides to save him from himself.

The captain Alekos Nikolopoulos doesn't get along with his wife. One day, he receives a letter from a woman he had met before the war who reminds him that she is pregnant.

A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember. As she tells the story of her lifelong love for him, he is forced to reinterpret his own past.

A paraplegic mistakes a man's pity for love.

A European doctor, in self-imposed exile in some place like Borneo, obsesses crazily over a ruling-class white woman.

An unusually intense and emotional day in the otherwise monotonous life of a woman.

Volpone, an elderly Venetian, connives with his money-crazed servant to convince his greedy friends that he is dying, knowing that each will try to curry favor with him in order to be named his heir. He is inundated with valuable gifts, and soon finds himself entangled deeper and deeper in a web of lies.

The young Austrian princess Marie Antoinette is arranged to marry Louis XVI, future king of France, in a politically advantageous marriage for the rival countries. The opulent Marie indulges in various whims and flirtations. When Louis XV passes and Louis XVI ascends the French throne, his queen's extravagant lifestyle earns the hatred of the French people, who despise her Austrian heritage.

A lady who had a secret affair lives in fear.

Dr. Holk leads an isolated and lonely existence in a small, Dutch colony in the tropics. Having fled from love and civilization, his only companions now are alcohol and his work, which takes him to villages ravaged by dirt, fever and a strange illness which turns innocent people into madmen: Amok. One day, he is called on by Helene Haviland, who asks him to abort her lover's child before her husband returns from abroad. Even though Holk is enchanted by her seductive beauty, he haughtily refuses her request. Rejected, the woman turns to a Chinese practitioner. When Holk tracks her down in a dirty dive, it's already too late for the two of them.

On the back of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a young business man is about to commit suicide. With the note to his wife scribbled down and a gun in his hand, he notices a thick envelope addressed to him at the desk. As he begin to read, we're taken back to the days of WW1 and his meeting with a young woman named Mary Lane.

One autumn, Edgar, a 12 year old boy, spends a holiday with his mother at a plush hotel in Switzerland. His father, a busy lawyer, remains at the family home in Vienna. When he sees a stylish motorcar pull up at the hotel, Edgar wastes no time befriending its owner, an amiable dandy. The latter pays more attention to the boy’s mother than to the boy himself, and decides to use Edgar to wheedle his way into her affections. When Edgar realises he has been used, he is far from happy...

After the tragic death from malaria of her beloved husband his rich widow Helga Vanroh travels restlessly around various Mediterranean countries. In the luxurious surroundings of a hotel in Monte Carlo Mrs. Vanroh keeps apart from society, until one evening she decides to visit the casino. There a young man attracts her curiosity and compassion.

"The Fear of an Unfaithful Woman" - Inge Duhan lives with her husband, the lawyer Erich Duhan, and her little daughter Susi in Berlin. Inge is a very attractive woman. She loves her husband and has always been faithful to him. On a holiday trip to the French Riviera Inge meet the charming painter Francard. A brief affair begins that turns into blackmail.

The proprietors of a small inn on the Italian coast suddenly have to cater for a company of conscripts on their way to a nearby port. One of the sergeants recognizes Resa as a former "camp-follower". When her husband hears of this he becomes insanely jealous and decides to join the company.

Christine looks after her ailing mother and toils in a provincial Austrian post office in the years just after the Great War. One afternoon, as she is dozing among the official forms and stamps, a telegraph arrives addressed to her. It is from her rich aunt, who lives in America and writes requesting that Christine join her and her husband in a Swiss Alpine resort. After a dizzying train ride, Christine finds herself at the top of the world, enjoying a life of privilege that she had never imagined. But Christine’s aunt drops her as abruptly as she picked her up, and soon the young woman is back at the provincial post office, consumed with disappointment and bitterness. Then she meets Ferdinand, a wounded but eloquent war veteran who is able to give voice to the disaffection of his generation. Christine’s and Ferdinand’s lives spiral downward, before Ferdinand comes up with a plan which will be either their salvation or their doom.