A spirited young woman finds herself destitute and on the streets before joining a traveling carnival, where she meets a vagabond painter.
Nora Moran, a young woman with a difficult and tragic past, is sentenced to die for a murder that she did not commit. She could easily reveal the truth and save her own life, if only it would not damage the lives, careers and reputations of those whom she loves.
A circus owner and a lady trapper trek into the African jungle to capture a giant gorilla for his circus.
There is a war in the world between the men and the women. A young girl tries to escape this reality and comes to a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old woman that never leaves her bed but stays in contact with the world through her radio.
On the lam, criminal Alonzo hides in the circus as The Armless Wonder – a performer who uses his feet to hurl knives. Alonzo keeps the arms he really has concealed to hide his identity. Meanwhile, ringmaster's daughter Nanon has a phobia of being touched by men, but is romantically pursued by not only Alonzo but the strongman Malabar. Alonzo's desperation to remain with Nanon will only end in tragedy.
After a baron steals his scientific discoveries, runs away with his wife, and slaps him in public, a man joins a Parisian circus sideshow as a clown whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly and becomes infatuated with a showgirl colleague whose father intends to marry her off to the baron.
To ensure a full profitable season, circus manager Brad Braden engages The Great Sebastian, though this moves his girlfriend Holly from her hard-won center trapeze spot. Holly and Sebastian begin a dangerous one-upmanship duel in the ring, while he pursues her on the ground.
In a small American town, a diabolical circus arrives, granting wishes for the townsfolk, but twisted as only the esteemed Mr. Dark can make them. Can two young boys overcome the worst the devil himself can deal out?
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.
On his deathbed, Ludovico entrusts his daughter Margot to the housekeeper, Felicia, asking that the family villa be transformed into an orphanage so that the little girl can grow up in joy with other children. But the wicked Felicia only wants the little girl's assets and not take care of her. With the complicity of her suitor, Max, she exploits the orphaned children and keeps Margot segregated and neglected to the point that the child withdraws into herself and no longer speaks. One night, however, Margot manages to escape and, after overcoming the darkness of the woods, she comes across a circus.
Over 3 studio sessions, a dancer overcomes his self-doubt and regains his self-confidence through this other character pushing him to get out of his comfort zone. His anxiety is represented through the delay of his reflection in the dance studio mirror.
A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.
Chandran, a circus performer, and Thankam are in love. The circus team borrows some money from Thankam's father, Paithal Nair. When they are unable to repay, Paithal Nair takes away their animals.
500 years into the future, the earth is a dry wasteland destroyed by humans. Doctor Alma, a fluffy, brilliant Vulkeet (a cross between a parakeet and vulture) who drives a Vespa, must cure the only creatures left who can save the world by bringing back the rain - the bizarre and loveable Homeys who have fallen ill with a mysterious sickness.
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?
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.
At a three-ring circus, 'Spangles' Delancy, a beautiful bareback horse rider, falls in love with a wanted man, Dick Radley, who uses the circus as a hideout. The show's owner Big Bill Bowman also falls in love with Spangles-- But only one man can have her.
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.
Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.
The wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husband's restaurant.