European Movie Titles Trivia Quiz

Answer: Budapest

Budapest is the capital city of Hungary, but the film 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' was actually set in the fictional country of Zubrowka and largely filmed on location in Germany. While the film starts with a young girl reading a book about the hotel, most of the story is told in flashback and focuses on the lives of the hotel's owner Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) and concierge Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) after war breaks out. While this initially might not sound like the premise of a comedy, the events that befall Moustafa and Gustave end up including being framed for murder, dashing about with a painting of disputed ownership, and escaping from a monastery on a sledge.

'The Grand Budapest Hotel' was directed by Wes Anderson and other famous faces that appear include Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law, Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton. It was nominated for nine Oscars and won four of them, including Best Score (the others were all in technical categories).

Answer: Nuremberg

'Judgment at Nuremberg' is a fictionalised account of the Nuremberg Trials that were held to bring people to account for the atrocities and war crimes committed under the Nazi regime during the Second World War. The film was based on a simplified version of the real-life Judges' Trial of 1947, and was told as a "courtroom drama" where the American judges and prosecutors attempted to gain an understanding of how the German legal system had allowed thousands of people to be executed or imprisoned for their religion, race beliefs or disabilities. Spencer Tracy played the chief judge, while Burt Lancaster portrayed one of the defendants and Marlene Dietrich appeared as the widow of an executed German military leader.

The film has been noted as one of the most important in American film history and was preserved in the US National Film Registry in 2013. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won two of them - the Best Actor Award (which went to Maximilian Schell for his portrayal of a German defence lawyer) and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Answer: Berlin

'Funeral in Berlin' is the second in a trilogy of films that featured Michael Caine as a British spy named Harry Palmer - the other two in the series being 1965's 'The Ipcress File' and 1967's 'Billion Dollar Brain'. All three are based on novels by the noted spy thriller writer, Len Deighton. 'Funeral in Berlin' was set in the German capital, Berlin, but the funeral in question was in fact an attempt to smuggle a Soviet spy over the border between East and West Germany by hiding him in a coffin. Needless to say, the plot doesn't exactly go to plan and one of the conspirators ends up in the coffin instead - actually dead, rather than simply pretending to be so.

The film's director, Guy Hamilton, also directed four films in the 'James Bond' franchise: 'Goldfinger', 'Diamonds Are Forever', 'Live and Let Die' and 'The Man with the Golden Gun'.

Answer: Moscow

The first film in the 'Police Academy' series was released in 1984 and the first five sequels followed at a rate of one a year until 1989. There was then a five-year gap before the seventh instalment, 'Police Academy: Mission to Moscow', appeared in a limited range of cinemas - both the delay and restricted distribution probably reflected the swiftly declining popularity (and quality) of the films. The plot hinged around the extremely unlikely concept of the United States sending a bunch of bungling police officers and their new recruits to Russia in order to apprehend a notorious member of the mafia and prevent him from taking down global computer security systems.

Several long-standing characters from the series returned for 'Mission to Moscow' and they were joined by the English actor Sir Christopher Lee as the (apparently desperate) Russian police chief who asked the Americans for help in the first place...

Answer: Barcelona

'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' was about two friends called Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) who visited the Spanish city of Barcelona and ended up in a complicated love triangle with an artist named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem). Aside from the obvious complications caused by two friends falling for the same man, there was also the added issue of Juan Antonio's ex-wife (played by Penélope Cruz) and the fact that Vicky already had a husband.

The film won its only Academy Award nomination (Penélope Cruz in the Best Supporting Actress category) and also had success at the Golden Globe awards where it was named Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.

Answer: Bruges

'In Bruges' was about a pair of hitmen who fled to the Belgian city of Bruges when a hit went wrong and one of them, Ray (Colin Farrell), killed a child by mistake. Their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), was enraged by the mistake and insisted that the other hitman, Ken (Brendan Gleeson), kill Ray in retribution for the child's death. When Ken proved unable to kill his friend, Harry visited Bruges himself to finish the job. Despite apparently being about the subtle ethics of being a hired contract killer, the film is comedic, and the trio get themselves into a variety of bizarre situations while trying to kill each other.

Farrell and Gleeson were both nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, but the award went to Farrell.

Answer: Paris

The film 'Last Tango in Paris' was controversial because of both the inclusion of explicit sex scenes and for its graphic depiction of rape. The film was censored in a range of countries, with several different scenes being cut from it before release. It starred Marlon Brando as an American living in Paris who had an anonymous relationship with a young French girl (Marie Schneider) that went fatally wrong when he told her more information about himself.

The premise of the film was developed by its Italian director, Bernardo Bertolucci, and he also co-wrote the screenplay. It gained Bertolucci a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director, but in his home country the film resulted in him being convicted of obscenity and given a suspended prison sentence.

Answer: Athens

'It Happened in Athens' is a romantic-comedy film set during the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, the capital city of Greece, in 1896. The plot revolved around the somewhat rash declaration by a famous Greek actress named Eleni Costa (played by Jayne Mansfield) that she would marry the winner of the Olympic marathon. Her lover, Lieutenant Vinardos, had entered the race and was one of the favourites, but he was unexpectedly beaten by a young shepherd who also happened to be the boyfriend of Eleni's maid. Eleni quickly changed her mind about her marriage promise and urged the shepherd and the maid to marry instead. The shepherd was named Spiridon Loues and was a fictionalised version of Spyridon Louis, the real winner of the 1896 Olympic marathon.

The film was a box office flop and led to Mansfield being dropped by the film studio 20th Century Fox.

Answer: London

'London Has Fallen' was the second outing for Gerard Butler as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, after the character first appeared in the 2013 film 'Olympus Has Fallen'. The plot of this film involved a terrorist attack on Western leaders attending the funeral of the British Prime Minister in London. Banning undertook the task of keeping the US President alive through multiple further attacks, while the US Vice President (Freeman) co-ordinated a rescue mission from Washington D.C.

Answer: Rome

The 2010 film entitled 'When in Rome' was a romantic comedy about a single woman (Kristen Bell) who plucked five coins out of an apparently magical fountain that causes the person who threw the coin into the fountain to fall in love with the person who fished it out. Taking so many coins out of the fountain duly left Bell's character with the problem of a whole host of unwanted suitors in addition to the one man she truly loved (Josh Duhamel).

The 1952 'When in Rome' was about a Catholic priest who had his identity stolen by a conman. The priest and the conman then went on a pilgrimage together around various holy sites in Rome and the Vatican. The film was one of the last to be directed by Clarence Brown, a legendary director who had previously been nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Director (but hadn't won any of them).