The Sideshow(1928)

The Girl on the Bridge(fr)

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.

1-2-3 Corona(de)

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.

The Rainbow Princess(en)

Hope has an act in a traveling circus where she is "the rainbow princess" and performs a Hula dance. The owner of the circus pawns the girl off on Judge Daingerfield as his long-lost granddaughter. Hope goes to live with the judge, and to the horror of his upstanding family, insists on having the circus performers over as her guests. But the whole ruse, unbeknownst to her, is so that the circus owner's sons can rob the judge.

The Butterfly Circus(en)

At the height of the Great Depression, the showman of a renowned circus leads his troupe through the devastated American landscape, lifting the spirits of audiences along the way. During their travels, they discover a man without limbs at a carnival sideshow. However, after an intriguing encounter with the showman, he becomes driven to hope against everything he has ever believed.

A Short Story(bn)

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

Joshilaay(hi)

Dara and Karan, the sons of two of the victims of dacoit Jogi Thakur, wait many years to exact their revenge. When the Thakur's colleague Raja Singh cheats him and runs away with his loot, Jogi is arrested and sentenced for life imprisonment. Years later Jogi escapes from the prison to get hold of Raja and take back his booty, but finds his face on all the posters in the village to find him dead or alive with a reward of fifty thousand rupees. When Karan gets to know Jogi has escaped he goes looking for him. Dara also join hands with Karan to even the score with the dreaded dacoit.

Balloon Animal(en)

Poppy Valentine, a young circus performer who has grown up in her family's traveling circus, has never dreamed of what life would be like outside of its fences. However, now in her mid-20s and with more unwelcomed responsibility weighing her down, she's desperate to figure out if this life is for her.

Arena(ru)

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(en)

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?

La Strada(it)

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.

Des Lebens ungemischte Freude(de)

A young dancer becomes a stunt rider through the patronage of a wealthy man.

The Circus Tent(ml)

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

Eine Motte flog zum Licht(de)

A young circus performer enters a relationship with a prince, but is quickly discarded.

If the Father and the Son(de)

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?

Ie Naki Ko(ja)

"Don't pity me, just give me money." A smart little girl, Suzu, for the sake of her beloved sick mother, has no choice but to attempt all ways to fork up the money required for the operation. It includes stealing, cheating and almost anything that could yield cash. However, deep within her is a sadness unseen by many.

Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man(en)

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.

Katharina Knie(de)

"Katharina Knie" is a 1929 German silent drama film directed by Karl Grune and starring Eugen Klöpfer, Carmen Boni and Adele Sandrock. It is based on the 1928 play of the same title by Carl Zuckmayer.

L'uomo proiettile(it)

The Little Clown(en)

Mary Miles Minter is the title character. Pat (Minter) is a little orphan who has been raised around the circus. Her foster father is Toto the clown (Neely Edwards). Toto hopes to marry Pat until the day the circus comes to a Southern town and she meets handsome Dick Beverley (Jack Mulhall). Beverley falls in love with Pat and takes a job as trick rider just to be near her. Beverley's aristocratic parents (Winter Hall and Helen Dunbar) find out about his new job and insist that he come home. Two of the five reels survive.

A Tiger Walks(en)

A tiger escapes from a circus truck as it passes by a small town, and hides itself in the surrounding woods. This throws the town into a panic and everyone wants the animal killed immediately, except for the daughter of the sheriff. She wants to capture the tiger and put it in a zoo, thereby saving the tiger's life. Her determination starts a nationwide campaign among children to raise the money to buy the tiger from the circus, but first, she, her father and an Indian tiger trainer must find the tiger before the National Guard do, who have orders to kill it on sight.