Ontdek waar je kijken Tchaikovsky: The Enchantress in Nederland

A former world-famous conductor of the Bolshoï orchestra, known as "The Maëstro", Andreï Filipov had seen his career publicly broken by Leonid Brezhnev for hiring Jewish musicians and now works cleaning the concert hall where he once directed. One day, he intercepts an official invitation from the prestigious Théâtre du Châtelet. Through a series of mad antics, he reunites his old orchestra, now composed of old alcoholic musicians, and flies to perform in Paris and complete the Tchaikovsky concerto interrupted 30 years earlier. For the concerto, he engages a young violin soloist with whom he has an unexpected connection.

Hard-working bakery owner Kate Holiday, has more cookie orders than she has time to fill this holiday season, and when her boyfriend suddenly breaks up with her, any shred of Christmas joy she was hanging onto, immediately disappears. After Kate hangs the last ornament on the tree and goes to bed, she awakens the next morning to a little bit of Christmas magic. She gets the surprise of her life when Chip, a handsome soldier who may or may not be the Nutcracker Prince from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” appears in her living room.

In het negentiende-eeuwse Rusland raakt de jonge en beeldschone Antonina Miliukova hevig verliefd op de componist Pjotr Tsjaikovski. Ze wil met hem trouwen en Tsjaikovski stemt toe om een einde te maken aan de roddels over hem. Al gauw schuift hij de schuld van al zijn ongeluk in haar schoenen. Klem tussen zijn vernederingen en de gevoelens die ze voor hem koestert, glijdt Antonina af richting waanzin.

Eigentijdse versie van Tsjaikovski's gelijknamige balletsprookje met Barbie in de hoofdrol. In de Notenkraker wordt het verhaal verteld van het meisje Klara dat van haar tante een Notenkrakerpop cadeau krijgt. Als Klara die nacht wakker wordt, blijkt dat de pop tot leven is gekomen. Vervolgens belanden Klara en de knappe Notenkraker van het ene in het andere avontuur.

In August 1991 a failed coup d'état attempt (known as Putsch) led by a group of hard-core communists in Moscow, ended the 70-year-long rule of the Soviets. The USSR collapsed soon after, and the tricolour of the sovereign Russian Federation flew over Kremlin. As president Gorbachev was detained by the coup leaders, state-run TV and radio channels, usurped by the putschists, broadcast Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" instead of news bulletins, and crowds of protestors gathered around Moscow's White House, preparing to defend the stronghold of democratic opposition led by Boris Yeltsin, in the city of Leningrad thousands of confused, scared, excited and desperate people poured into the streets to become a part of the event, which was supposed to change their destiny. A quarter of a century later, Sergei Loznitsa revisits the dramatic moments of August 1991 and casts an eye on the event which was hailed worldwide as the birth of "Russian democracy".