The Sideshow

Arena

August 1967 •Russian

In one of the occupied European cities, the commandant of the garrison gathers a troupe of circus performers. Coming from different countries, they are in the humiliating position of people forced to serve their enslavers. Many of them, recruited from camps and workhouses, were quite content with their lot. Only after a chain of subsequent events, the artists raise an uprising. Unarmed people are not able to resist the arrived guards. They die, but at the cost of their lives they regain their lost human dignity.

Punch and Jody

November 1974 •English

When a woman dies in a car accident, her former husband (a traveling circus worker) learns that his wife was pregnant when she divorced him many years earlier. The now teen-aged daughter enters his life. Can they form a relationship?

Big Fish

December 2003 •English

Throughout his life Edward Bloom has always been a man of big appetites, enormous passions and tall tales. In his later years, he remains a huge mystery to his son, William. Now, to get to know the real man, Will begins piecing together a true picture of his father from flashbacks of his amazing adventures.

La Strada

September 1954 •Italian

When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

Under the Big Top

August 1938 •English

Director Karl Brown's 1938 circus drama stars Marjorie Main as a tough, fur-coat-wearing circus boss who raises her orphaned niece to be a trapeze star.

Wings of Desire

September 1987 •German

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds -- with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk -- that it might be possible for him to take human form.

La part du lion

February 2023 •French

The Girl on the Bridge

March 1999 •French

It's night on a Paris bridge. A girl leans over Seine River with tears in her eyes and a violent yearning to drown her sorrows. Out of nowhere someone takes an interest in her. He is Gabor, a knife thrower who needs a human target for his show. The girl, Adele, has never been lucky and nowhere else to go. So she follows him. They travel along the northern bank of the Mediterranean to perform.

La venenosa

October 1949 •Spanish

A snake-charmer falls in love with a circus trapeze artist who trains her and has her debut in this discipline.

If the Father and the Son

August 1955 •German

After Clown Teddy lost his son, he lost his gift for laughter. He opened a joke shop and lives above the shop. His landlady has had a foster son since birth, and Teddy decides to raise the child, who always believed that Teddy was his father. When the mother suddenly appears five years later and wants her son, Teddy decides to run away with the child and goes back onstage with his son. Will the family catch up with them, or will the mother never get her son back?

The Circus Girl

November 2010 •English

Set in a 1910 circus, young Charlotte travels from city to city with her acrobat family who perform on the Trapeze. With her training almost complete, she already takes on the daring Blindfolded trick. Despite never having successfully completed the trick, Charlotte is determined to do the trick at the upcoming performance. But worries about that take a back seat when Charlotte learns about the circus potentially going out of business. She's determined to find the truth about whether or not she- and her daring Trapeze act- are the secret to saving the circus. But to do that, she will have to get into the Forbidden Train Car Z.

Santa Sangre

November 1989 •Spanish

A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his mother – the leader of a strange religious cult – and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.

Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man

May 2000 •English

A child is born. We see underwater swimmers representing this. He is young, in a jungle setting, with two fanciful "instincts" guiding him as swooping bird-like acrobats initially menace, then delight. As an adolescent, he enters a desert, where a man spins a large cube of metal tubing. He leaves his instinct-guides behind, and enters a garden where two statues dance in a pond. As he watches their sensual acrobatics of love, he becomes a man. He is offered wealth (represented by a golden hat) by a devil figure. In a richly decorated room, a scruffy troupe of a dozen acrobats and a little girl reawaken the old man's youthful nature and love.

The Circus Tent

January 1978 •Malayalam

The arrival of a travelling circus sends ripples through the inhabitants of a remote Keralan village.

A Short Story

January 2015 •Bengali

Focusing on the predicaments of those born with genetic defect causing dwarfism, the film is the love story between Khoka and Soma.

1-2-3 Corona

September 1948 •German

Post-war Germany 1945: Two rival gangs of uprooted boys fight each other in the ruins of Berlin, whose business is the black market out of necessity in order to survive. Their respective leaders are Gerhard and Dietrich. A pretty young circus artist named Corona comes to the destroyed city with a traveling circus. She immediately caught the boys' attention. When the latter notice that the circus director is abusing the girl, the two gangs join forces and plot an act of revenge against the tyrant. But with the hustle and bustle caused by this, Corona falls from the trapeze and is seriously injured. When the circus moves on, the boys organize a doctor for the sick artist who has been left behind. Their collectively concern for the blonde beauty makes them forget their enmity. This welds the troops closer together and sets the course for a common, meaningful future.

Werckmeister Harmonies

February 2001 •Hungarian

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.

Dixiana

July 1930 •English

A circus performer falls in love with the son of a plantation owner in antebellum New Orleans. When the young man's stepmother objects to the wedding, the couple break apart and go their separate ways for a time. Also in the mix are two circus comics who feud over the heart of another Southern belle.

Mera Naam Joker

December 1970 •Hindi

Raju faces many hurdles and disappointments in matters of the heart throughout his life. But as a clown in a circus, he tries to make his audience laugh at the cost of his own sorrows. Along the way, Raju loves and loses, but must always keep a smile on his face because, in the words of his circus manager, "The show must go on."

Carnival Magic

March 1983 •English

A magician in a carnival--who actually can read minds and levitate people and objects--works with a superintelligent chimp named Alex, who can also talk. The magician and the chimp soon become the stars of the carnival, drawing in big crowds. However, the wild-animal trainer, who has been displaced by the team as the carnival's top act, decides to kidnap Alex and sell him to a medical laboratory for experimentation, thereby getting rid of his competition.