평범한 삶을 꿈꾸는 천재소년, 자신이 원하는 삶의 주인공이 되다. 박쥐 같은 예민한 청각과 거장 못지 않은 피아노 실력, 다섯 살 나이에 온갖 난해한 학문을 공부하는 비투스는 마치 다른 행성에서 온 것만 같은 아이다. 남들이 갖지 못한 특별한 재능에 아이에 대한 부모들의 기대는 점점 커져만 간다. 특히 부모들은 거장 못지않은 피아노 연주 실력을 지닌 아이가 피아니스트가 되기를 간절히 원한다. 하지만 천재소년 비투스가 좋아하는 것은 홀로 사는 할아버지와 함께 보내는 시간. 하늘을 날고 싶어 하며, 평범한 생활을 꿈꾸는 비투스. 결국 그는 극적인 반전을 통해서 자신이 원하는 삶의 주인공이 된다.
Argentinian biology student Miro falls madly in love with young actress Mercedes, but is without a clue as to how to win her love. Then, a series of misunderstandings put him in the hot seat as a famous film director. Miro grabs his chance to shoot a film with Mercedes as his leading lady, hoping that she will fall for him. Whilst his plan is crazy, it is simple enough and Cupid is on his side. But Miro hasn't reckoned with film students Peter and Luigi who wish to shoot a “making-of” documentary of the great Argentinian “director”at work.
Michael Haneke's adaptation of Franz Kafka's unfinished novel Das Schloss. K arrives in a remote village a stranger. In attempting to establish himself there, he enters the nightmarish world of the castle bureaucracy.
Senator Isaak Kohler shoots and kills Professor Winter in a crowded restaurant, while Winter is dining with the struggling idealistic young lawyer, Felix Spat. Kohler puts up no defense and is sentenced to twenty years. Kohler then gets his daughter Helene to pay the reluctant Spat to reinvestigate the case, on the assumption that Kohler is innocent. The newspapers pick up on this and begin to question whether Kohler was wrongly convicted.
Ulrich Mühe plays a German businessman who was born completely without scruples. This makes him an eminently suitable candidate for success in the chaotic years after World War I. The shameless man's story is contrasted with that of his polar opposite, a Jewish anarchist.
Francois Korb is an arms manufacturer who sold both to the Germans and the Allied forces. Korb's home life is less than ideal, since his wife is having an affair with his brother, and his young son is inseparable from a teddy bear. To remedy the son's situation, the parents take in a little refugee girl as a temporary companion and playmate, and the two children become fast friends.
With the help of his assistant Anja, Ottocaro Weiss intends to put the plague on stage: circumstances beyond his control and a lack of fresh talent have forced him to close down his flea circus. For Weiss, the plague means the «extinction of everything that makes life miserable and low and freedom along with it. Unbeknownst to him, he has won the support of a patron who is of the exact opposite opinion: for Johannes Wagner, the plague is an organising principle, and, aided by his agent Moosbrugger, he is able to smuggle a new number onto the programme. Whereas Ottocaro Weiss means to represent the plague theatrically, what appears on stage is the scientific reality of the rat-borne infestation.
