Eine Motte flog zum Licht(1915)

Lili(en)

Members of a circus troupe "adopt" Lili Daurier when she finds herself stranded in a strange town. The magician who first comes to her rescue already has romantic entanglements and thinks of her as a little girl. Who can she turn to but the puppets, singing to them her troubles, forgetting that there are puppeteers? A crowd gathers around Lili as she sings. The circus has a new act. She now has a job. Will she get her heart's desire?

One from the Heart(en)

In a dazzling, dreamlike Las Vegas, longtime couple Hank and Frannie break up on their fifth anniversary and each pursue the fantasy of new love over one neon-soaked night—he with a free-spirited acrobat, she with a seductive musician. But as illusion and reality blur, both must decide whether passion or devotion truly defines the heart.

Flamingo Road(en)

A stranded carnival dancer takes on a corrupt political boss when she marries into small-town society.

The Unknown(en)

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.

Circus World(en)

Circus owner Matt Masters is beset by disasters as he attempts a European tour of his circus. At the same time, he is caught in an emotional bind between his adopted daughter and her mother.

The Greatest Showman(en)

The story of American showman P.T. Barnum, founder of the circus that became the famous traveling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Two Moon Junction(en)

A young Southern débutante temporarily abandons her posh lifestyle and upcoming, semi-arranged marriage to have a lustful and erotic fling with a rugged drifter who works at a local carnival.

Street Angel(en)

A spirited young woman finds herself destitute and on the streets before joining a traveling carnival, where she meets a vagabond painter.

The Circus(en)

Charlie, a wandering tramp, becomes a circus handyman - soon the star of the show - and falls in love with the circus owner's stepdaughter.

Trapeze(en)

A pair of men try to perform the dangerous "triple" in their trapeze act. Problems arise when the duo is made into a trio following the addition of a sexy female performer.

Carny(en)

Tired of being a small-town waitress, Donna departs with the latest carnival show, living with entertainers Frankie and Patch in a tense, emotional triangle.

All Day and a Night(en)

While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.

Gigi & Nate(en)

A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.

Better Start Running(en)

An eclectic band of misfits becomes an unlikely family as they take a wild journey in the name of love while on the run from an overzealous FBI duo who want them dead or alive - preferably dead.

Treasure(en)

A music journalist accompanies her father, a charmingly stubborn Holocaust survivor, on a journey to his homeland. While she's eager to make sense of her family's past, her dad has an agenda of his own.

Tigertail(en)

A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

He Who Gets Slapped(en)

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.

High Strung Free Dance(en)

Zander Raines, a dazzling and tempestuous young choreographer, gives the break of a lifetime to two hopeful artists when he casts a stunning contemporary dancer, Barlow, and innovative pianist, Charlie, in New York’s most-anticipated new Broadway show: Free Dance. But the move throws off the show’s delicate creative balance when Charlie falls hard for Barlow, while Zander embraces her as his muse.

Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything(de)

Set in a warm summer in 1990 in former East Germany, it follows a young woman who begins a relationship with a charismatic farmer who is twice her age.

Babylon(en)

Drama telling the story of Blue, a young man of Jamaican descent living in Brixton in 1980, as he hangs out with his friends, fronts a dub sound system, loses his job, struggles with family problems and has his friendships tested by racism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Circus Tent(ml)

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

Circus Lure(en)

Joe Henry, head of a one-ring circus, plays a small town and after the departure of the troupe a young girl, fascinated by the prospects of being a star, follows. She is engaged and her presence causes jealousy on the part of Joe's sweetheart.

Wings of Desire(de)

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.

The Blue Angel(de)

Prim professor Immanuel Rath finds some of his students ogling racy photos of cabaret performer Lola Lola and visits a local club, The Blue Angel, in an attempt to catch them there. Seeing Lola perform, the teacher is filled with lust, eventually resigning his position at the school to marry the young woman. However, his marriage to a coquette -- whose job is to entice men -- proves to be more difficult than Rath imagined.

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?

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.

Travelling Circus(vi)

A small traveling circus from Hanoi arrives at a village struck down by famine, trying to sell magic and dreams.

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 Last Romantic Lover(fr)

The romance between a lion tamer and a liberated girl.

Zirkus des Lebens(de)

Lola Montès(fr)

Lola Montes, previously a great adventuress, is reduced to being the attraction of a circus after having been the lover of various important men.

Toby Tyler or Ten Weeks with a Circus(en)

Angered at stern Uncle Daniel, Toby Tyler runs away from his foster home to join the circus, where he soon befriends Mr. Stubbs, the frisky chimpanzee. However, the circus isn't all fun and games when the evil candy vendor, Harry Tupper, convinces Toby that his Aunt Olive and Uncle Daniel don't love him or want him back. Toby resigns himself to circus life, but when he finally realizes that Tupper lied to him, and that his aunt and uncle truly love him, Toby happily returns home once again.

Rosetta(pt)

An extroverted, cheerful, dreamer, Rosetta was raised in the “Traveling Circus of Pitibiribas”. From a very young age, she dreamed of following her parents' profession and become a circus clown, but when offered the opportunity to perform in public for the first time, she gets nervous and gets her number wrong. Consumed with the feeling of failure, she runs away before she could fulfill her dream

Itinerary of a Spoiled Child(fr)

A foundling, raised in the circus, Sam Lion becomes a businessman after a trapeze accident. However, when he reaches fifty and becomes tired of his responsibilities and of his son Jean-Philippe, he decides to disappear at sea. However, he runs into Albert Duvivier, one of his former employees. He comes to realise that he has ignored the important things in his life.