2014 marks a year of celebration recognizing the 150th birthday year of the German late-Romantic orchestral, operatic and lied master composer, Richard Strauss (1864-1949). Arabella (premiered 1933, Dresden) was the last of the half dozen Strauss works to feature a libretto by the great Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. This production, from the most recent Salzburg Easter Festival is, after Capriccio, the second of three Richard Strauss operas C Major is releasing in honor of the composers birth, life and work. The star-laden cast includes soprano Renèe Fleming, baritone Thomas Hampson, Albert Dohmen (Covent Garden, Wiener Staatsoper, MET) and Gabriela Beaková (Wiener Staatsoper, Covent Garden). With Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden, the music of Richard Strauss is in the best of hands. (ORF) Thielemann gets the best out of the cast...especially Renée Fleming with her luxurious soprano FAZ

Anja Harteros excels in the title role of Michael Sturminger’s cinematic staging of Puccini’s “Tosca”, the centrepiece of Salzburg Easter Festival. Aleksandrs Antoņenko compellingly portrays Cavaradossi, while Ludovic Tézier is a thrillingly malevolent Scarpia. Christian Thielemann leads the Staatskapelle Dresden. “Tosca” is a political thriller with a heart-breaking love story that gives a vivid account of the harassment of artists, political persecution, torture and arbitrary executions. In Salzburg it is set in the Mafiosi world of modern day Rome and is “the perfect thriller … reminiscent of Scorsese’s ‘Goodfellas’” (Kleine Zeitung), a “film noir”

Jewish painter Leopold Mayer fled his native Frankfurt at the rise of the Nazi regime. Although briefly finding refuge in France, where he changed his name to Leo Maillet, his stay was cut short by Germany's invasion of Paris. Flucht traces Maillet's escape from the Gestapo and the French police, using Maillet's "Entre chien et loup" series of paintings as the framework for the film. Accompanied by Maillet's son Daniel, Peter Nestler revisits the late artist's hiding places and depicts a hauntingly beautiful portrait of an outstanding artist on the run.

As Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger wanted to lead the Church back to its former strength, but instead he plunged it into a deep crisis. He reacted largely inactive to the revelations of multiple cases of abuse by clergy. In order to understand the thinking of this unconditional hardliner, documentary filmmaker Christoph Röhl delves deep into Ratzinger's past - but what really leaves us speechless are the testimonies of how the church, on a large and small scale, dealt with the crimes of its priests.

A documentary about experimental drummer Fritz Hauser.

The shy Hugo is a caretaker in a prefabricated building. He feels at home here, is appreciated by the residents and sings his songs in the corridors. Dramatic changes make Hugo uncomfortable in his home. Similarly dissatisfied is Johanna, who lives in a bus in front of the house and faces racism and sexism on a daily basis. The two grow closer - sharing a sense of not quite belonging and, above all, a love of music. For Hugo, the world is visibly coming apart at the seams: birds that reject freedom, a dollhouse that develops a life of its own - At the same time, a catastrophe is brewing in very real life that puts Hugo and Johanna's friendship to the test.

Known as a creator of astonishing images, stage director and visual artist Robert Wilson delivers a magnificent production of Mozart’s adaption of Handel’s Messias. Mozart was commissioned by Gottfried van Swieten to modernise the score fifty years after Handel’s popular composition (1742), mainly by arranging the wind parts and partially re-composing them. With Marc Minkowski a conductor has been engaged who understands perfectly how to combine baroque style with the tonal possibilities of an orchestra of the classical period like the Musiciens du Louvre. The excellent soloist quartet with Elena Tsallagova, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Richard Croft and José Coca Loza merges perfectly into Wilson’s enormous flood of images.

Woyzeck takes psychotropic drugs and punishes himself physically. He has no choice. It's his living. With what he earns selling his body and by working in a restaurant and in subway tunnels, he just about makes ends meet. Coming home to his wife Marie and his infant child, he’s an impotent wreck -- and definitely unable to afford the earrings he sees Marie wearing one day. She’s frustrated and the jewelry is a gift from the local pimp. Woyzeck wasn't supposed to find out. But he has. Plagued by voices, he loses his already weak grip on reality. He retreats into the tunnels with Marie and the baby. There Woyzeck is the master of life and death.

The true story of Wanda Rutkiewicz, the first woman in the world and the first person from Poland to climb the highest peaks on earth, told by herself.

Anne-Marie Blanc became a symbol for an entire generation 60 years ago with her role as "Gilberte de Courgenay". Who is this woman who has given countless theater and film characters a face and a soul over the decades? What highs and lows did she experience during her artistic career, which began in 1938 and continues to this day? Anne Marie Blanc gives surprising and poignant answers in the film portrait of Anne Cuneo. Excerpts from films and plays illustrate the stages of her extraordinary career.

In 1988, Cynthia Beatt and the young Tilda Swinton embarked on a filmic journey along the Berlin Wall into little-known territory. The film is now an unusual document. 21 years later, in June 2009, Beatt & Swinton re-traced the line of the Wall that once isolated West Berlin. This film depicts this poetic passage through varied landscapes, this time on both sides of the former Wall.

At the Paris airport Orly, a woman falls for a stranger, a family heads to a funeral, a couple lose touch, a wife reads her husband’s break-up letter. All wait for their planes. Absorbed in their immediate fates, they move through the impeccably structured space, unaware of a looming threat outside.

After suffering a stroke during a performance, cabaret artist Rainald Grebe faces up to his illness. A touching documentary about his return to the stage.

Christian Thielemann conducts this Staatskapelle Dresden production of Richard Strauss' chamber opera. The opera follows events at the home of the wealthiest man in Vienna, who has booked both a comedy burlesque act and a serious opera group for entertainment. When the dinner runs long he declares that both forms of entertainment must take place at the same time - much to the chagrin of the opera's proud young composer. Filmed live in Baden-Baden on Feb. 25 by the veteran director Brian Large, Renée Fleming makes her debut in the role of Ariadne together with fellow key Strauss interpreters Sophie Koch and Christian Thielemann, following on from their Rosenkavalier triumph. Thielemann conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden, the orchestra to whom Strauss dedicated his Alpine Symphony and which premiered Feuersnot, Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier and Daphne.

12-year-old Fabi has to finally prove himself as one of the family - by getting his first scar.

The moving story and amazing new insights into the life of the legendary entertainer! Udo Jürgens looks back on his life and career with disarming honesty. He does not shy away from uncomfortable topics such as the agonizing doubts of the early years, the high price of success and the fears and desires that drove him. Celebrities and personal companions also contribute many exciting insights.

The story of women's struggle against sexual discrimination and for inclusion in the democratic process in (West) Germany after WW II.

The young, despotic and untalented artist Adolf Hitler comes to Vienna to study art. He befriends the Jew Schlomo Herzl working on a novel with the title "Mein Kampf". Hitler is rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Herzl's concern for the sad young man continues, and leads him to a new career with disastrous consequences for world history.

A focus on the inner workings of a political party making headlines at district, state and national level as an “alternative for Germany”. Thanks to the film’s striking objectivity, it becomes clear where argument ends and contradictions begin.