In the reign of emperor Tiberius, Gallilean prophet John the Baptist preaches against King Herod and Queen Herodias. The latter wants John dead, but Herod fears to harm him due to a prophecy. Enter beautiful Princess Salome, Herod’s long-absent stepdaughter. Herodias sees the king’s dawning lust for Salome as her means of bending the king to her will. But Salome and her lover Claudius are (contrary to Scripture) nearing conversion to the new religion. And the famous climactic dance turns out to have unexpected implications…

Cock Robin is the swaggering ballyhoo man of a Hungarian sideshow known as the Palace of Illusions. The highlight of the show is a reenactment of Salome’s dance of the seven veils, replete with the beheading of Jokanaan. The performer portraying Salome is in love with Cock Robin. Jealous, sinister The Greek is determined to eliminate that competition.

Goltzius and the Pelican Company tells the story of Hendrik Goltzius, a late 16th century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints. A contemporary of Rembrandt and, indeed, more celebrated during his life, Goltzius seduces the Margrave of Alsace into paying for a printing press to make and publish illustrated books. In return, he promises him an extraordinary book of pictures of illustrating the Old Testament’s biblical stories. Erotic tales of Lot and his daughters, David and Bathsheba, Samson and Deliah and John the Baptist and Salome. To tempt the Margrave further, Goltzius and his printing company will offer to perform dramatisations of these erotic stories for his court.

Lydia, a midwife very invested in her work, is in the middle of a breakup. At the same time, her best friend, Salomé, announces to her that she is pregnant and asks her to follow her pregnancy. The day Lydia meets Milos, a one-night stand, while she is holding her friend’s baby in her arms, she sinks into a lie, at the risk of losing everything.

Pacino takes us on a journey as he unravels and re-interprets Oscar Wilde’s once banned and most controversial work SALOME, a scintillating tale of lust, greed and one woman’s scorn.

One of Al Pacino’s directory experiments, Salomé was filmed over 5 days in 2011, but has yet to be widely released. It is a part of a double feature on the Oscar Wilde short play “Salomé”, together with the Venice-shown documentary “Wilde Salomé”, that shows the making of this film. The synops shown on IMDb for the 1923 take on the play goes as following: “Salome, the daughter of Herodias, seduces her step-father/uncle Herod, governor of Judea, with a salacious dance. In return, he promises her the head of the prophet John the Baptist.”