A frail boy fights to win acceptance from the leader of a street gang.
When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.
Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.
A craftsman builds a glass harmonica that enlightens him. He travels to a town where the people are obsessed with money. A bureaucrat smashes the glass harmonica which leads to chaos and eventually to social reform.
A man may or may not have betrayed a resistance fighter during World War II. He has supposedly been shot down by the Nazis and wanders into town. Mourning the death of an unseen comrade, he is taken in by the family of the dead rebel. He engages in a superfluous affair and witnesses the lesbian relationship between the man's sister and a female servant. When passions subside, the family has doubts about the reliability of the man's story.
A group of French students are drawn into the psychological and sexual games of a mysterious man called Duchemin. Once they sample his "fear powder" the students experience a series of hallucinations.
Valerie, a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different light, Valerie must endure her sexual awakening while attempting to discern reality from fantasy as she encounters lecherous priest Gracian, a vampire-like stranger and otherworldly carnival folk.
Paper-Scissor-Rock wars draws an episode where the two generals portray the Second World War, mostly through the rock-scissors-bag, but also by some absurd torture techniques that bring to mind some sort of Japanese artificial 70s jack ass. To the sound of classical music, birds chirping and Nazi incendiary speeches travels generals, ever contestant in the seemingly meaningless game around at an abandoned industrial area.
A mid-level automotive company employee is summoned to the mountain villa of owner Giovanni Nosferatu, only to discover a glossy netherworld where capitalism is the new vampirism, and escape may be impossible.
The good-natured scholar Christian-Theodore arrives in a small country where miracles occur. He falls in love with the beautiful Princess, whose marriage is a matter of national importance, because her husband will become the new king. But unlike many “suitors”, selfish thoughts are alien to Christian-Theodore. He is sincerely fascinated by her beauty and releases his Shadow, hoping to get a faithful helper in his quest to marry the Princess. But the Shadow is the embodiment of egoism, greed and meanness. Quickly betraying the scholar, he marries the Princess himself and takes the royal throne.
Conrad's second short film, a funny allegory.
Blocks and balls fight simply because they are different, until their battle reduces everyone to the same shape.
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.
Freed after spending years in prison, an activist's homecoming turns into a dark affair as his disillusion clashes with his family's expectations. Demonstrating Chahine’s eclecticism, this is an elegant melodrama, exuberant musical, layered allegory, and profound portrait of personal and political disillusionment.
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.
A young engineer is supposed to do surveyings for a projected nuclear power station in an economically under-developed region and encounters strong opposition by the population. He realizes that the inhabitants are influenced by strange parapsychological occurences released by an elderly man, who also seems to dominate Walpurga, a young woman the engineer falls in love with.
An alien slave crash-lands in New York City while being pursued by two Men in Black bounty hunters. His attempt to find a place for himself on Earth parallels that of the immigrant experience.
After a train breaks down and the passengers are forced to spend a day at a remote country tavern, the mix of seasonal farm workers, transients, musicians, and would-be party kingpins heads toward some explosive moments. A truckload of chickens arrive to be killed and cooked for the unruly group of passengers, and when a few boorish men harass a female singer, their actions lead to unexpected violence.