Béla Balázs

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.

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”…

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.

Judith arrives at Bluebeard's dark castle hoping her love can convince him to reveal the secrets behind the locked interior doors.

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.

Based on the Bela Bartok opera, Bluebeard woos his women and then swiftly disposes of them.

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.

A young woman, Junta, lives apart from her village and, for her solitude and strangeness, is considered to be a witch; when she comes to the village for one reason or another, the townsfolk chase her away. They feel that she may in some way be responsible for the deaths of several young men of the village, who have felt compelled, one by one, to climb the local mountain - and fall to their deaths - on nights when the moon is full.

A young woman, Junta, lives apart from her village and, for her solitude and strangeness, is considered to be a witch; when she comes to the village for one reason or another, the townsfolk chase her away. They feel that she may in some way be responsible for the deaths of several young men of the village, who have felt compelled, one by one, to climb the local mountain - and fall to their deaths - on nights when the moon is full.

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

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.

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'.

A farcical war between the forces of Commercial Cinema and Independent Cinema.

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.

When Professor Horski learns that his wife has published a volume of novellas under his name entitled "Wife" he feels compromised and is angered at her. But as he reads them, he finds that they are great. Also, he reads in them a warning to himself: one should not neglect one's wife for the sake of academic work. The film is considered to be lost.

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.