The Great Mystical Circus

Pinocchio: A True Story

December 2021 •Russian

Young Pinocchio runs away from his genius creator Jepetto. Accompanied by his horse Tibalt, he aims to see the world while joining the traveling circus ran by hustler Modjafocco.

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.

Bogus

September 1996 •English

Recently orphaned, a young boy is taken in by his godmother who is shocked to realize that she can see the boy's imaginary friend: a flamboyant, French magician named Bogus.

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.

7 Faces of Dr. Lao

March 1964 •English

An old Chinese man rides into the town of Abalone, Arizona and changes it forever, as the citizens see themselves reflected in the mirror of Lao's mysterious circus of mythical beasts.

Viva Maria!

November 1965 •French

An IRA operative escapes to the Americas and teams up with a circus singer to create a popular vaudeville act. When the singer falls for a rebel, they leave the circus behind to become fierce revolutionaries.

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 Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

October 2009 •English

A travelling theatre company has more to it than meets the eye.

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.