Europa, Europa
Based on the true story of a young Polish-German Jew who survived the Holocaust by falling in with the Hitler Youth, Europa Europa is a heartbreaking tale of a boy's chameleon-like ability to endure the horrors of World War II. Solly (Marco Hoschneider), a young teen when the Holocaust begins, leaps naked out of a bathroom window as the SS breaks into his family's home. Thereafter he embarks on a picaresque journey through the atrocities of wartime Europe, adopting various life-saving identities, from a member of a Communist orphanage to leader of a Hitler Youth group.
Acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland (Three Colours Blue) embellishes this bleak tale with dashes of irony and humour, including surreal dream sequences featuring Hitler and Stalin joined in a waltz. A fascinating personal memoir, Europa Europa is also a detailed historical chronicle of a devastating war and the monster ideologies that fuelled it.
Pandora's Box (Büchse der Pandora, Die)
Pandora's Box, the silent classic that caused a scandal on its 1929 release, stars Louise Brooks in the most memorable role of her career.
Lulu is a high class prostitute whose incredible beauty and passion for life leaves a trail of broken admirers in her wake. She effortlessly gets what she wants as she discards one lover for the next but events soon begin to spiral out of her control.
Beyond the iconic black bob and porcelain skin, Louise Brooks radiated sexuality with an unparalleled subtlety of expression and gesture. In Pandora's Box she gives her most captivating and erotically charged performance and displays a smouldering screen presence that has never been equalled.
Fitzcarraldo
Peru. Iquitos is a town isolated in the middle of the jungle at the turn of the century. On the outskirts, a few shacks are rotting in the mud. In the centre are the splendid houses of the nouveaux-riches rubber barons. It is in this setting, rich in grotesque contrast, that Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald-Fitzcarraldo, as the natives call him-has his dream of bringing together Enrico Caruso and Sarah Bernhardt for one great celebration of Grand Opera.
To finance this fantastic dream, Fitzcarraldo decides to exploit a vast area of rubber tires growing beyond the impassable Ucayala Falls. To circumvent this barrier, he literally has his huge steamboat lifted over a mountain from one branch of the river to the other. With the aid of a tribe of Indians bewitched by records featuring the voice of the greatest singer of all time, Fitzcarraldo fights fever, mosquitos and suffocating heat to achieve the impossible.
