71 Fragments of a Chronology of ChanceMovies like 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance
- Key Features:
- Social commentary, Urban alienation, Gun violence, Interconnected stories, Existentialism, Fate, Despair, Vienna, Christmas Eve, Tragedy, Intertwined narratives, Cerebral
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, cynical
- Target Audience:
- Art house cinema enthusiasts, Cerebral viewers, Fans of social commentary, Existential drama aficionados
- Emotional Arc:
- Detachment → Anxiety → Tragedy
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance

71 scenes revolving around multiple Viennese residents who are by chance involved with a senseless gun slaughter on Christmas Eve.
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance
A deadly car crash sets off three parallel stories of women at crisis points, faltering behind the doors of the same, plain Vienna apartment block.

A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.

A 14-year-old video enthusiast obsessed with violent films decides to make one of his own and show it to his parents, with tragic results.

This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.

The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.

Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.

A group of young slackers spend most of their time hanging out in front of a Munich apartment building. When a Greek immigrant named Jorgos moves in, however, their aimless lives are shaken up. Soon, new tensions arise both within the group and with Jorgos.

Chronicles three years of a middle-class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, troubled only by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, however, they're planning something much more sinister.

When Anna and her family arrive at their holiday home, they find it occupied by strangers. This confrontation is just the beginning of a painful learning process.

The film tells different stories in a kind of parallel Germany about love, affection and hatred.

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.

Two families, Sebkovi and Krausovi, are celebrating Christmas, but not everyone is in a good mood. The teenage kids think that their fathers are totally stupid, and the fathers are sure that their children are nothing more than rebels, hating anything they say.

Vienna, 1920. The Austro-Hungarian Empire has collapsed. Peter Perg returns home from the Great War, after years of captivity. But the Vienna he comes home to is nothing like the place he once knew. The new Austrian Republic thrives on social and artistic freedom, but anti-democratic movements and unemployment loom overhead. A stranger in his hometown, his life takes a turn for the worse when one of his former comrades is murdered. Suddenly the mysterious killings of veterans are mounting. Personally connected to the victims, Perg decides to bring the killer to justice. He finds an ally in the cool-headed forensic doctor Theresa Körner, with whom he has a deeper, shared history. Their investigation leads them into the darkest corners of the city, as they confront a brutal and systematic killer and intrigues from within the police force. But when the killer’s net closes around Perg himself, he faces the moral dilemma of his life.

An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.

An account of the events before and after a murder committed by a disturbed businessman in a strained marriage, and what led him to perform such a shocking act.

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.

Hans is a street fruit peddler and born loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After recovering from a debilitating heart attack, his business finally begins to take off. However, the more he becomes a credit to his family, the more depressed he becomes.

Two psychotic young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.

Loneliness, death and the meaning of life, explored through vastly separate lives colliding in interweaving short stories set in future Earth.

Jacek climbs into the taxi driven by Waldemar, tells him to drive to a remote location, then brutally strangles him, seemingly without motive.

Advent – a time of joyful anticipation. You will surely remember the feeling you had as a child, waking up on the first December morning. Rising early, ready to open a new door for 24 consecutive days.

Michaela, an epileptic, enrolls in college to study education. She goes off her medication and soon begins hearing voices and seeing apparitions that tell her to avoid religious objects, although she is devoutly Roman Catholic. One priest scoffs at the idea that Michaela could be possessed by demons, but a younger pastor arranges an exorcism for the young woman.

Tells the seemingly random yet vitally connected story of a set of incidents that all converge one evening at 11:14pm. The story follows the chain of events of five different characters and five different storylines that all converge to tell the story of murder and deceit.

A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.

An explosion sends fear and terror through Berlin. Young Maxi's home is reduced to rubble and ashes, burying her mother and little brothers. Only she and her father survive the terrorist bomb attack. When she happens to meet the charismatic Karl, who tells her about a conference for young people in Prague, she seizes the opportunity to flee Berlin and her grieving father. The political movement behind the meeting claims to be working for a better Europe. Maxi has no idea how close the murderers really are to her family.

Fisher, an ex-detective, decides to take one final case when a mysterious serial killer claims the lives of several young girls. Fisher, unable to find the culprit, turns to Osbourne, a writer who was once respected for his contributions to the field of criminology. Fisher begins to use Osbourne's technique, which involves empathizing with serial killers; however, as the detective becomes increasingly engrossed in this method, things take a disturbing turn.

Katja's life collapses after the deaths of her husband and son in a bomb attack. After a time of mourning and injustice, Katja seeks revenge.

Two stories for the price of one: a video store clerk tries to get acquainted with a waitress; a man beats his pregnant wife, unaware that her brother is a violent racist.

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

A successful artist loses control of his life after his young daughter's death. A chance for a new start appears, but all is not what it seems.

A quintet of cabbies in five cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.

In the middle of a performance of the play "Le Cocu", a bad boulevard comedy at a Parisian theatre, Yannick gets up and interrupts the show to take the evening back in hand.

Felicie and Charles have a whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.

After a chaotic night of rioting in a marginal suburb of Paris, three young friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, wander around unoccupied waiting for news about the state of health of a mutual friend who has been seriously injured when confronting the police.

In Hollywood, the lives of a successful film producer, his wife, a police detective and a surveillance agent intersect after a botched abduction.

Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy, peace and goodwill. But for some folks in the small town of Bailey Downs, it turns into something much less festive.

Tragedy meets comedy in seven stories about how our entire world can collapse at any given moment.

Several ordinary high school students go through their daily routine as two others prepare for something more malevolent.

Two neurotics, working for a suicide hotline on the night of Christmas Eve, get caught up in a catastrophe when a pregnant woman, her abusive boyfriend, and a transvestite visit their office.

Having fathered an illegitimate child with his lover, Marie, feckless soldier Franz Woyzeck takes odd jobs around his small town to provide some extra money for them. One job is volunteering for experiments conducted by a local doctor, who puts Woyzeck on a diet of peas. This serves to drive him close to madness, and the discovery that Marie is involved in an affair with the local drum major exacerbates the situation. Pushed too far, Woyzeck resorts to violence.

A forged 500-franc note is passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is—which will have devastating consequences on his life.

Three surreal depictions of failures of communication that occur on all levels of human society.

It's the 22nd of December. Sixteen years have passed since the revolution, and in a small town Christmas is about to come. Piscoci, an old retired man is preparing for another Christmas alone. Manescu, the history teacher, tries to keep up with his debts. Jderescu, the owner of a local television post, seems not to be so interested in the upcoming holidays. For him, the time to face history has come. Along with Manescu and Piscoci, he is trying to answer for himself a question which for 16 years has not had an answer: "Was it or wasn't it a revolution in their town?"

In an attempt to win back her ex-boyfriend Jack on Christmas Eve, Kate ends up ruining her blind date with Miles, a handsome guy she's been set up with. In a strange twist of fate, Kate is magically given the chance to re-live Christmas Eve twelve times!

Josef visits a dilapidated Sanatorium to see his father. Josef undertakes a strange journey through the many rooms of the sanatorium, each which conjures worlds composed of his memories, dreams and nightmares.

Alex Linden is a psychiatrist living in Vienna who meets Milena Flaherty though a mutual friend. Though Alex is quite a bit older than Milena, he's attracted to her young, carefree spirit. Despite the fact that Milena is already married, their friendship quickly turns into a deeply passionate love affair that threatens to overtake them both. When Milena ends up in the hospital from an overdose, Alex is taken into custody by Inspector Netusil.

An enigmatic tale of four people whose lives are intertwined by destiny are subject to the laws of fate. They discover that luck is something they cannot afford to be without as they gamble with the highest stakes possible in a deadly game from which only one of them will emerge intact.

The title refers to those strange coincidences that happen to us sometimes and that seem inevitable, like a product of destiny. Inspired by the experience of a Canarian child victim of cancer, the film is conceived as a Christmas story.

Fox, a former circus performer, wins the lottery of DM 500,000 and can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. He enters an abusive relationship with wealthy industrialist Eugen in an attempt to climb the social ladder. His desperation for love and affection soon spirals into tragedy.

A Hungarian youth comes of age at Buchenwald during World War II. György Köves is 14, the son of a merchant who's sent to a forced labor camp. After his father's departure, György gets a job at a brickyard; his bus is stopped and its Jewish occupants sent to camps. There, György find camaraderie, suffering, cruelty, illness, and death. He hears advice on preserving one's dignity and self-esteem. He discovers hatred. If he does survive and returns to Budapest, what will he find? What is natural; what is it to be a Jew? Sepia, black and white, and color alternate to shade the mood.

The surreal tale of an unassuming man who is accused of a never-specified crime and shambles through bizarre encounters to escape this nightmare.

Set between the parallel worlds of contemporary London and the futuristic faith dominated metropolis of Meanwhile City, Franklyn weaves a tale of four souls, whose lives are intertwined by fate, romance and tragedy. As these worlds collide, a single bullet determines the destiny of these four characters.

A tremendous congestion hits the Rome highway ring. The biggest traffic jam ever seen lasts more than 36 hours. At the beginning the people blocked in their cars react normally. But as more time passes, the more we witness personal dramas, hysteric reactions and other grotesque situations. All the episodes are linked as if in a single plot. Cars and their hosts are a microcosm of stories part of a larger universe: the congestion.

In Seoul, a suicidal student meets a young woman who decides to join him in his fatal gesture. Dong-soo, an unsuccessful filmmaker, spots a beautiful young woman, who happens to be the lead actress in the film he has just seen. Their stories will cross paths thanks to their love for cinema.

Czech literature teacher Josef Tkaloun, who is past retirement age, realises one day that he no longer understands his pupils, and so he quits… dramatically. What he does not predict is that in doing this he will lose his sense of place in society.

When land surveyor K arrives at a small village that houses a castle, local authorities refuse to allow him to enter. As he tries to convince the officials that they sent for him, they clamp down with increasingly complicated bureaucratic obstacles.

A disparate group of characters unknowingly bond by the sexual choices they make. Consumed by loneliness, a British businessman ponders a rendezvous with a prostitute. The businessman's wife prepares to call it quits with her younger lover. A Brazilian student breaks up with her boyfriend in London. A recovering alcoholic travels to Phoenix in search of his missing daughter. A paroled sex offender struggles to stay composed when propositioned in a Denver airport. A widower's religious devotion is put to a difficult test.

Seven episodes, each taking place on a different day of the week, on the theme of suicide and violent death.

A dark comedy about a murder and its consequences presented in a backwards manner, where death is actually a rebirth. The film starts with an "execution" of the main protagonist and goes back to explore his previous actions and motivations.

Indifferent to the notion of inheriting his father's estate, a restless, aging New Yorker passes time with his friends in games of mock sincerity, irreverence, and recreational cruelty towards those around them.

A production company begins casting for its next feature, and an up-and-coming actress named Rose tries to manipulate her filmmaker boyfriend, Alex, into giving her a screen test. Alex's wife, Emma, knows about the affair and is considering divorce, while Rose's girlfriend secretly spies on her and attempts to sabotage the relationship. The four storylines in the film were each shot in one take and are shown simultaneously, each taking up a quarter of the screen.

Multiple lives intersect in the aftermath of the violent mugging of a Columbia University philosophy professor.

A dicey murder investigation. A fuming best friend. A chaotic living situation. Village police officer Franz Eberhofer has a lot on his plate right now.

When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.

Mitsuko, a young student, encounters a series of horrifying incidents set in alternate realities where people wind up dead in the most horrendous fashion.

After a dispute over a winning lottery ticket turns into a deadly hostage situation, the witnesses must decide exactly how far they’ll go—and how much blood they’re willing to spill—for a cut of the $156 million.

A police chief in northern France tries to solve a case where an old woman was brutally murdered on Christmas Eve. However, in a neighborhood rife with crime, everyone seems to be a suspect.

Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.

A dramatization of the Montreal Massacre of 1989 where several female engineering students were murdered by an unstable misogynist.

Seemingly mild-mannered businessman Edmond Burke visits a fortuneteller and hears a remark that spurs him to leave his wife abruptly and seek what is missing from his life. Encounters with strangers and unsavory people weaken the barriers encompassing his long-suppressed rage, until Edmond explodes in violence.

Improbable encounters bring tenderness, laughter and compassion to a world of urban alienation.

A husband and wife lie to each other about their weekend travel plans, only to both show up at the family's country house with their lovers.

Ève and Henri are among the happy few of the French community in Vienna. They are “la crème de la crème”. The perfect picture crumbles when Ève discovers that Henri is cheating on her. On an impulse, she finds revenge with Jonas, a perfect young Austrian guy. But he’s not who she thought he was. This will lead them to an irreversible spiral.

A fictional account of one year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. On Christmas Eve 1877, Elisabeth, once idolized for her beauty, turns 40 and is officially deemed an old woman; she starts trying to maintain her public image.

An aged tailor recalls his life as the schoolteacher of a small village in Northern Germany that was struck by a series of strange events in the year leading up to WWI.

An elderly gentleman goes for what he assumes will be an ordinary day at the amusement park, only to find himself in the midst of a hellish nightmare.

Kings should be treated courteously! At least, that's what famous music critic Georg thinks. But he finds himself counting pennies when his chief editor suddenly fires him from the Viennese newspaper for which he has been writing for decades. While keeping his dismissal a secret from his psychotherapist wife Johanna, whose mind is occupied solely by getting pregnant, Georg begins to plot his revenge.

In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one's foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.

Arthur is invited to a New Year's Eve party to celebrate the year 2000. His girlfriend Lucie would like a baby from him but he refuses. Through the ceiling of the toilets, he discovers a passage leading to this futurist Paris. There, he meets an old man Ako who affirms he is his son and that he wants to exist. Otherwise he will vanish into the air. Arthur is still hesitant because his life is an unfulfilled one: a has a little lucrative job, is uncertain about his future and things are getting out of hand when Ako discovers the passage and interferes in the party.

A collection of intersecting short stories set in early 1980s Los Angeles, depicts a week in the lives of an assortment of socially alienated, mainly well-off characters who numb their sense of emptiness with casual sex, violence, and drugs.

After two teenagers from abusive households befriend each other, their lives take a dark adventure into existentialism, despair, and human frailty.

When 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a subway train it appears to be only the beginning of a string of suicides around the country. Detective Kuroda tries to find the answer to this mystery, which isn't as simple as he had hoped.

You can’t choose your family – which is why Conrad limits his visits with his parents to an absolute minimum. When venomous, irritable Carl injures himself seriously in a fall, his reluctant son Conrad and the butt-of-all-jokes Jonas has no choice but to move back into his old childhood room. Three generations under one roof: a chance for reconciliation – or a total disaster?

Los Angeles homicide detective Jerry Beck searches for the murderer who killed a police officer on Christmas Eve. The investigation takes Beck inside the violent world of hate groups and white supremacists, who are hatching a deadly plot to attack even more innocent people. Beck must also confront his own personal demons, including his growing problem with alcohol, if he wants to track down and stop the violent neo-Nazis before it is too late.

France, 1914, during World War I. On Christmas Eve, an extraordinary event takes place in the bloody no man's land that the French and the Scots dispute with the Germans…

Eva, an ex-dancer, is now living in a wheelchair, unable to walk. When her friend Sophie gives her an old wooden antique advent calendar before Christmas, she realizes each window contains a surprise that triggers repercussions in real life: some of them good, but most of them bad... Now Eva will have to choose between getting rid of the calendar or walking again… even if it causes death around her.

On a winter morning, a mother goes to waken her son Heinrich; his bed is empty. She leaves her flat to find him. The neighbors' door, with a Star of David painted on it, is ajar, the furnishings in disarray, the family gone. She asks passersby, runs to the police then on to the rail yard. Flashbacks show that Heinrich and the neighbors' son Paul are six years old and best friends. Paul's family's deportation is expected soon; Heinrich's mother tells her son that they're going to Toyland. Heinrich wants to go with them, has a bag packed, and listens for their departure. His mother realizes he's joined them, and her resolve becomes more urgent. Will she arrive in time to save Heinrich?

In a strange and isolated chateau, a man becomes acquainted with a woman and insists that they have met before.

When Ann, husband George, and son Georgie arrive at their holiday home they are visited by a pair of polite and seemingly pleasant young men. Armed with deceptively sweet smiles and some golf clubs, they proceed to terrorize and torture the tight-knit clan, giving them until the next day to survive.

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

An ordinary man frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.

Two young women, Margaret and Lisa, are set to take the overnight train from Munich in Germany to stay with Lisa's parents in Italy for Christmas. Unfortunately a pair of psychotic hoodlums and an equally demented nymphomaniac woman terrorize the pair.

A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality, guided by a Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments have the same significance as historical events. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.






