Known for Acting
1956. Three Hungarian friends hijack a plane to escape from the Iron Curtain.
A new National Theatre is built, and the director hires a famous Danish director for the premiere performance. The actors rehearse, the tractor and the construction workers work on the almost finished building. Everything seems to be on track, including the train, unfortunately, on the siding of the bridge next to the theatre. It's a little too loud and it's echoing into the main hall, so rehearsals are squeezed into a room that isn't very big. Bridge cushions are coming, even though it's cold and a bit like Christmas, but most importantly, the art is happening and the lead actress is indeed a queen. She falls in love with her partner and destroys him at the end of the performance. The role takes shape, only sometimes it is eerily similar to the real life of the artists. Will they live to see the premiere?
What do Hansel and his wife dream of in a one-and-a-half bedroom in a housing estate? They dream of being happy, successful and rich. They dream of the American dream. And because his father has been a US citizen for thirty years, they finally muster up the courage and all the money they can to embark on the great adventure. They fly across the ocean to start a new life in the promised land of their rebellious teenage daughter. True, they know only a few English words. In fact, all they know about America is what they see in movies and on TV. But they have great faith in Papa John, because John knows "what life is all about". The grandfather is both the typical Las Vegas retiree and the proud Hungarian who owns a real junkyard. Jenő is a true survivalist and a desert philosopher, whose great banalities are sometimes interspersed with real wisdom.
Claudia is a talented girl who is about to embark on a career as an opera singer. However, an incident of purse theft will change everything, because it will bring Paul back to a life that the young woman had planned for.
Enquiries into the murder of a young woman take the private investigator Peter Keller to the idyllic village of Schwant in Emmental. But, the more entangled Keller gets in the treads of the apparently clearcut case of sex murder, the more obvious the flaws in the village idyll become. Keller's quest turns into a deadly mission.
