Les Secrets du Colisée

For Cologne newspaper journalist Michael Heinrich, a year-long posting as Itally correspondent is a dream coming true. His lawyer wife Susanne agrees to take her long-postponed sabbatical year there, but janitor Filippo and his hunky cousin Toni still hasn't finished the apartment in Principe Ercole's 'palazzo'. Angelic son Tobias and pubescent brat Caroline object being torn away from their world, but soon take to welcoming Romans. Roman utilities and Vatican bureaucracy test Michael's patience as well as Ercole's frisky niece Maria and Susanne's visiting parents. Controversial archaeology professor Neri offers Michael a 'steal' scoop on the missing main Etruscan sanctuary. Written by KGF Vissers

In 25 AD, Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew in ancient Judea, opposes the occupying Roman empire. Falsely accused by a Roman childhood friend-turned-overlord of trying to kill the Roman governor, he is put into slavery and his mother and sister are taken away as prisoners.

Treacherous Roman senator Lucius Quintilius plans a secret journey into Thrace to recover a legendary treasure. He is accompanied by his daughter Livia posing as a Christian slave girl, his cruel henchman Commodio, and Terenzius, an ex-gladiator and Nero look-alike who fools the local Thracians into believing he is the real Emperor. But Lucius's plans are thwarted by Spartacus and his band of rebels who succeed in capturing the treasure for Thrace. When news arrives from Rome that the real Nero has died, local Roman governor Consul Metellus joins forces with Spartacus to defeat the traitors.

Bewildered, Don Camillo learns that Peppone intends to stand for parliament. Determined to thwart his ambitions, the good priest, ignoring the recommendations of the Lord, decides to campaign against him.

After fierce Roman commander Marcus Vinicius becomes infatuated with beautiful Christian hostage Lygia, he begins to question the tyrannical leadership of the despotic emperor Nero.

Titus Andronicus returns from the wars and sees his sons and daughters taken from him, one by one. Shakespeare's goriest and earliest tragedy.

Rousseau's first full-length feature, and one of the best documentaries/experimental films of the past few decades, sprung equally from Robert Bresson, Michael Snow, and Jean-Marie Straub (who has called Rousseau one of the three best working artists in modern Europe). Again hard places played against drifting sounds from unseen sites beyond the image; the images and sounds, repeated, become inflections of each other. But this time there are historical inflections; Rousseau's film, like Straub's, takes place in a sort of meta-history as characters and ancient sites each become products of outside light and shadow.

Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, and Fulvius sent away to fight for Rome, is there any hope of our heroes reuniting?

After the death of the paranoid emperor Tiberius, Caligula, his heir, seizes power and plunges the empire into a bloody spiral of madness and depravity.

The story of the Arthurian legend, based on the 'Sarmatian hypothesis' which contends that the legend has a historical nucleus in the Sarmatian heavy cavalry troops stationed in Britain, and that the Roman-British military commander, Lucius Artorius Castus is the historical person behind the legend.