The best Leon Lissek’s drama movies

A dramatic retelling of the life of Michel de Nostredame, from his early work as a plague doctor to his time at the court of Catherine de Medici, after he became famed for his prophetic almanacs. Stars Rutger Hauer and Julia Ormond.

Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.

Hungary, XVII century. After being widowed, the old countess Elizabeth Nádasdy, of the Báthory lineage, fortunately discovers a way to become young again; but the price to be paid by those around her will be high and bloody.

The passionate Merchant-Ivory drama tells the story of Francoise Gilot, the only lover of Pablo Picasso who was strong enough to withstand his ferocious cruelty and move on with her life.

A Jewish girl in 19th century London dreams of becoming a stage actress.

Tsar Nicholas II, the inept last monarch of Russia, insensitive to the needs of his people, is overthrown and exiled to Siberia with his family.

Joseph K. awakes one morning, to find two strange men in his room, telling him he has been arrested. Joseph is not told what he is charged with, and despite being "arrested," is allowed to remain free and go to work. But despite the strange nature of his arrest, Joseph soon learns that his trial, however odd, is very real, and tries desperately to spare himself from the court's judgement.

The plot is set on a group of bank robbers, who are both violent and successful, strangely getting away each time with an amount around the £60,000 mark, and often leaving behind cash in excess of this sum. The robbers are willing to kill their own team, to get away. As Jack Regan himself puts it after the first raid in the film: "I've never seen so many dead people". Armed with gold-plated Purdey shotguns, they evaded Regan and the Flying Squad for quite some time, before Regan finds encouragement from his Detective Chief Superintendent who was sent down for corruption because Jack wouldn't testify in court for him.

Adapted and directed by Peter Brook from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘production-in-progress US’, this long-unseen agitprop drama-doc – shot in London in 1967 and released only briefly in the UK and New York at the height of the Vietnam War – remains both thought-provoking and disturbing. A theatrical and cinematic social comment on US intervention in Vietnam, Brook’s film also reveals a 1960s London where art, theatre and political protest actively collude and where a young Glenda Jackson and RSC icons such as Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Scofield feature prominently on the front line. Multi-layered scenarios staged by Brook combine with newsreel footage, demonstrations, satirical songs and skits to illustrate the intensity of anti-war opinion within London’s artistic and intellectual community.

In Charenton Asylum, the Marquis de Sade directs a play about Jean Paul Marat's death, using the patients as actors. Based on 'The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade', a 1963 play by Peter Weiss.

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson get involved with Balkan terrorists to save Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria from an assassination at the opera house and prevent World War I.

A dramatization of the life of Albert Speer, Hitler's young architect and onetime confidant, and his meteoric rise into the Nazi hierarchy. Based upon Speer's own monograph of the same title.

Baal is an amoral poetic genius who, after a life of debauchery, betrayal and violence, is about to cut his ties to the world and meet his doom. A high society party is where the end begins.

An old captain & his young wife share a lot of adventures after they're shipwrecked and captured by Aborigines on an island near Australia.

When Professor Henry Jones Sr. is invited to give lectures all over the world in May 1908, he takes along his wife and son, and invites his former tutor Miss Helen Seymour to teach Henry Jr. during the trip. Their first stop is Cairo, Egypt. When Junior, who prefers to be called 'Indy' and Miss Seymour visit the pyramids, they are invited by T.E. Lawrence (another former student of hers) to join an archaeological dig. When the mummy disappears and a priceless headpiece is stolen, young Indy gets his first taste of adventure. On their next stop in Tangiers, the family stays with Professor Jones' former class mate Walter Harris. Indy befriends a young slave named Omar who belongs to Emily Keen. The two of them get into trouble when they Indy insists on visiting the market place to see a salted head displayed on a pole. Caught by slave traders, they are end up at an auction from which only Harris can attempt to rescue them.